The Park Fire, which started Wednesday near Chico, and has forced evacuation warnings and orders as far northeast as the Shingletown-Manton area and into Lassen Volcanic National Park, has slowed its growth thanks to favorable weather conditions.
The fire tore through Butte and Tehama counties for three days before crews were able to leverage lower temperatures and calmer winds Saturday to stop the fire from entering Shasta County.
The fire had burned 360,141 acres as of late Sunday afternoon. It was a growth of about 10,000 acres since Saturday night, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The fire was still 12% contained.
Readers, scroll down for the latest updates on Sunday, July 28.
The Park Fire is the seventh-largest wildfire in state history, Cal Fire said. It has prompted evacuation warnings and orders in Butte, Tehama, Shasta and Plumas counties.
Officials over the weekend downgraded their estimate of structures destroyed, which had been 134, but they do expect the count to increase as experts arrive in communities to see the fire's destruction.
An assessment team was on the ground surveying and confirming the damage. Cal Fire's report on Saturday night listed 20 destroyed structures, but that count grew to 100 by Sunday evening. The number of damaged structures was listed at 5.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom declared an emergency last Friday due to the damage from the blaze.
At an afternoon press conference updating the Park Fire, officials said rugged terrain and heavy vegetation have presented difficulties for crews battling several spot fires in the area of Butte Meadows in Butte County.
But officials said firefighters were making good progress and had so far prevented the spot fires from spreading. There had been no reported deaths or injuries and authorities had not received reports of missing people.
Officials also reiterated that firefighters were doing a good job of stopping the fire from spreading into Shasta County.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said they are working on downgrading evacuation orders to warnings but that, too, has been a challenge for authorities.
Honea said they were working on changing the evacuation order in Forest Ranch to a warning but the spot fires thwarted those plans for now.
“That creates a real problem for us,” he said of the rapidly changing conditions and the risk it poses to residents.
While the Park Fire started in Butte County, most of the terrain that has burned has been in Tehama County.
Monty Smith, chief of the Cal Fire Tehama-Glenn unit, emphasized that in the press conference, noting that of the more than 357,000 acres the fire has burned, about 304,000 acres are in Tehama.
No one from Shasta County gave an update on the fire at the afternoon press conference.
Firefighters are battling at least five spot fires along Highway 32 in the area of Humboldt Road, according to emergency scanner traffic. The area is north of Forest Ranch near Lomo in Butte County.
Dispatch reports between firefighters say that crews are worried about the fire going into the Butte Meadows area.
Meanwhile, the fire has grown to 357,341 acres up, about 4,000 acres from Sunday morning. It is still 12% contained.
High humidity levels and low to moderate winds have helped firefighters grow containment on the fire, Park Fire public information officer Jeremy Hollingshead said Sunday.
“We have been going direct and really using weather to our advantage. The men and women have worked hard to try to put this thing to bed as soon as possible,” he said.
The fire has forced evacuation warnings and orders in four counties: Butte, Tehama, Shasta and Plumas counties.
The Shasta County Sheriff's Office on Sunday morning said current evacuation orders and warnings in Shasta remain unchanged from Saturday.
Meanwhile, the fire has burned about 5,000 acres north of Highway 36, but crews have stopped the blaze from entering Manton and going into Shasta County, Hollingshead said.
“The fire is holding up on a ridge in the Manton area. We have dozer lines, retardant lines and crews are going direct on that area to ensure that it is not going to go further north,” he said.
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The northeast portion of the fire continues to be the most active, Cal Fire said.
Hollingshead said weather will again help firefighters on Sunday.
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“For the Tehama-Shasta zone, the weather will be partly cloudy,” he said, adding that the relative humidity will be around 30% in the area of the fire. “That’s a lot better than we were getting the first two days of the fire.”
Hollingshead said there are nearly 4,000 firefighters on the blaze with crews coming from out the state.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Park Fire updates: Crews fight hot spots as blaze pushes east toward Sierra towns in Butte
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