Fire History
The first major fire was the human-caused Summit Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which started on May 22, 2008. On June 8, 2008, the next major fire to break out was the Indians Fire in the Ventana Wilderness of the Los Padres National Forest. During the weekend of June 21–22, a dry low-pressure system crossed over California producing dry lightning and ignited nearly 2000 fires across 17 counties.
As of July 5, 2008, 328 fires continued to burn and 81% of the original fires had been contained. For the first time since 1977, the military helped with ground-based firefighting, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dispatched 400 California National Guard troops to man fire lines. He said the number of fires had stretched the state's fire-fighting resources thin. "One never has resources for 1,700 fires. Who has the resources for that?" Schwarzenegger said, adding "Something is happening, clearly. There's more need for resources than ever before... it's fire season all year round".
The lightning-caused Basin Complex Fire near Big Sur started on June 21 and burned 162,818 acres (658.90 km2), eventually torched the Ventana Wilderness until it merged lines with the Indians Fire. The Basin and Indians Fires consumed a combined 244,000 acres (990 km2) and was the third largest fire in California history. More than $120 million was spent to fight the fire, making it is the most expensive fire in California history and the second most expensive in U.S. history, exceeded only by the Biscuit Fire in 2002.
On July 5, 2008, California Governor Schwarzenegger commented that "I've been driving up and down the state of California going to all the various fires, and you can imagine, this state is very prepared for fire, but when you wake up one morning and have 500 fires across the state, it was a real shock to me... only to find the next morning there were 1,000 fires, and the next morning 1,400 fires, and then 1,700 fires igniting over 14 days."
The fires forced the evacuation of Big Sur prior to the July 4 holiday weekend. The Pico Blanco Scout Reservation was forced to evacuate the camp and diverted its Scouts to Boulder Creek Scout Reservation in Santa Cruz. The camp lost only one building, an outlying ranger's cabin. Big Sur residents were permitted to return on July 9. while further north, the town of Paradise in Butte County was evacuated when flames burned close.
The Gap Fire near Goleta in Santa Barbara County burned 8,357 acres (33.82 km2). The fire was contained on July 29, after several weeks of activity.
As of July 11, 2008, it was reported that a total of 793,483 acres (3,211.11 km2) had burned, a total exceeding the estimated 500,000 acres (2,000 km2) burned in the California Wildfires of 2007. On July 12, 2008, the area burned reached 801,726 acres (3,244.47 km2), exceeding the estimated 800,000 acres (3,200 km2) burned during the series of 2003 California wildfires making those wildfires in 2008 the greatest wildfire in California history by burned area. On that date 20,274 personnel had been committed to fight the fires. Total resources included 467 hand crews, 1,503 engines, 423 water tenders, 291 bulldozers, 142 helicopters, 400 soldiers and numerous air tankers. The fire was responsible for the deaths of 23 individuals.
On July 25, a blaze sparked by target shooting broke out in Mariposa County, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of central California. By the following day, the Telegraph Fire had gone from 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) to 16,000 acres (65 km2), and within days had destroyed 21 homes in the community of Midpines. Residents were evacuated from approximately 300 homes that were immediately threatened, with an additional 4,000 homes placed on standby for evacuation in Midpines, Greeley Hill, and Coulterville.
Read more about this topic: Summer 2008 California Wildfires
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When man first lived in caves along the creeks?”
“Marvelous world in nineteen-twenty-six.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)