California fire officials are feeling some relief that we made it through the Fourth of July holiday without any significant new wildfires.
But Cal Fire's Daniel Berlant said Monday that crews still have their hands full, fighting six wildfires across the state. The cause of each fire remains under investigation.
"(There are) fires in every corner of the state right now," Berlant, the agency's Asistant Deputy Director and Chief of Wildfire Planning and Engineering, told KCBS Radio.
The two largest fires, the Lava and Salt Fires, burn to the north of the Bay Area in Siskiyou and Shasta counties, respectively. The Lava Fire has burned just under 25,000 acres, while the Salt Fire has burned just under 12,000.
More than 800 firefighters are now battling the Salt Fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, with 70% containment on the Lava Fire freeing up resources.
"The equipment has started to get here, slowly but surely," Daron Wyatt, a spokesperson with California's interagency incident management team on the Salt Fire, told KCBS Radio.
Berlant said it already has been an active wildfire season in California. While some homes have burned, Berlant said most fires are burning in very remote areas.
"We've definitely seen an elevated number of wildfires itself," Berlant said. "The acres burned, we're almost on track to where we were last year, but even last year was a busy year."
Berlant said crews are making good progess on each of the active wildfires, but he expressed caution with temperatures due to rise in the coming days. Amid continued hot and dry temperatures in the forecast across the state due to the worsening drought, he urged the public to stay vigilant.
Berlant noted a car towing a trailer while dragging the trailer chains along the road, or even illegal fireworks, could cause fires in dry conditions.
"It just goes to show you that with these extreme drought conditions that have, really, (a) chokehold on much of California, it doesn't take much," Berlant said.
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