California wildfires: Three firefighters injured by falling tree in Siskiyou County
The firefighters were taken to Redding for medical care after the tree fell around 2:15 p.m. Friday, the forest service said. Updates on their conditions were not immediately available.
The Butler Fire, which began near the Salmon River on July 3, has forced evacuations in the Six Rivers and Klamath national forests. The wildfire is part of the Orleans Complex, which also includes the Red Fire burning since July 6 in Del Norte County.
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San Francisco Chronicle
19-07-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
California wildfires: Three firefighters injured by falling tree in Siskiyou County
Three firefighters were injured by a falling tree while battling the Butler Fire in Siskiyou County, the U.S. Forest Service said. The firefighters were taken to Redding for medical care after the tree fell around 2:15 p.m. Friday, the forest service said. Updates on their conditions were not immediately available. The Butler Fire, which began near the Salmon River on July 3, has forced evacuations in the Six Rivers and Klamath national forests. The wildfire is part of the Orleans Complex, which also includes the Red Fire burning since July 6 in Del Norte County.
Los Angeles Times
08-07-2025
- Los Angeles Times
After climber survives gruesome injury in Sierras, it takes five helicopters to rescue her
A solo female climber was nearing the remote summit of California's second-tallest mountain last week when she fell, injuring her leg so badly the bone was sticking through her skin. What's more, she lost her backpack. So, in a span of seconds, she went from nearing a personal triumph to finding herself alone and severely injured on a isolated and unforgiving mountainside with no food, water or extra clothing. That became a potentially life-threatening issue when, shortly after the fall, a line of afternoon thunderstorms rolled through the mountains, bringing high wind, terrifying lightning and buckets of rain. The Inyo County Sheriff's Department's Search and Rescue team, which coordinated the long and harrowing extraction, did not name the woman in a Facebook post on Monday, or provide a cost estimate of the rescue — which involved five helicopters and took two days. A spokesperson for the Search and Rescue team did not respond to requests for comment, but in a social media post they praised the stricken climber's courage throughout the harrowing ordeal. 'Enormous bravery and fortitude was shown by this patient, and all involved were impressed by her ability to remain calm, collected, and alive,' they wrote. Mt. Williamson is in the Eastern Sierras, about 240 miles northeast of Los Angeles, near Independence. At 14,380 feet tall, it stands in a range that towers over the Owens Valley. Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the United States outside Alaska, is a few miles to the south. While Mt. Whitney is extremely well-known and well-traveled — so many people want to climb it that the U.S. Forest Service has to limit the number to 160 a day in peak season — Mt. Williamson is remote and untamed. 'I've climbed it six times and I've never seen anybody else on the mountain, other than the people in our party,' said Dave Miller, a professional climber and owner of International Alpine Guides in Mammoth Lakes. Because of its isolation, and the fact that there is no established trail above 10,000 feet, Williamson is, 'many, many times more difficult' than Mt. Whitney, Miller said. A popular guidebook calls the upper reaches of Mt. Williamson 'a confusing maze of chutes, many of which lead to dead ends.' The Inyo Search and Rescue Facebook post offered no details about the rescued climber's experience, but it did mention that she was climbing 'off-route' in that final, tricky stretch, at about 13,600 feet elevation. 'What gets people into trouble, more than anything, is getting off route and then getting on something harder or looser than they expected,' Miller said. One compelling detail in the post is that the woman was alone in such a remote, and challenging wilderness. As a general rule, hikers and climbers are advised to go to such places in groups and to stick together in case something goes wrong. But experienced climbers 'solo' mountains all the time, and experts agree it can be reasonably safe as long as they stick to terrain that they can handle with ease. And although Mt. Williamson is remote and difficult by a casual hiker's standards, it would not be overly ambitious for an experienced mountaineer to tackle alone, said Howie Schwartz, another veteran mountain guide with decades of experience in the Sierras. 'I don't think it would be an overreach for somebody who was familiar with these mountains and familiar with the area, it could be a good adventure,' Schwartz said. It would be a different story, entirely, for an inexperienced 'city person' who knew little more than what's available on the internet, he said. Whatever her background, the woman rescued last week owes her life to multiple agencies that refused to give up trying to reach her even after bad weather and high elevation pushed them back time and time again. And to a $400 satellite transmitter, called an InReach, that she used to send an SOS message and communicate with authorities despite the lack of a cellphone signal. Soon after receiving the distress call on Wednesday, the Inyo Search and Rescue team requested help from other agencies, and a California Highway Patrol helicopter landed in the small town of Lone Pine and picked up two rescue climbers. 'But dense cloud cover over the mountain forced the helicopter to return without reaching the subject's location,' according to Inyo Search and Rescue's Facebook post. With daylight running out and the storm raging, a call for help went out to the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station. Even the Navy couldn't get directly to the stricken woman, but just before midnight, they dropped four rescue climbers at 10,500 feet — about 2,000 feet below her. By sunrise they had made their way to the bottom of the steep face the woman was trapped on, and they were within shouting distance of her, but they still couldn't reach her. The next day, Thursday, a CHP helicopter managed to drop two more rescue climbers 300 feet above the injured woman. They were able to descend and finally reach her, 23 hours after the ordeal began. But getting to her was only half the battle; they still had to find some way to get her out of there. She was stuck in a 'steep, narrow chute' — like a chimney surrounded by rock walls — that 'exceeded the helicopter's hoist capabilities,' according to the post. So they called the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which has a helicopter equipped with an extra-long hoist cable. That helicopter showed up, but it couldn't reach the high altitude. Another call went out to the military, this time the California National Guard, and an extremely powerful Black Hawk helicopter was sent to the scene. That one was finally able to climb to the necessary altitude and hoist the woman to safety. 'This mission is a powerful reminder of the dangers of high-altitude mountaineering and the extraordinary efforts behind each rescue,' the Sheriff's Department noted on Facebook.
Los Angeles Times
16-06-2025
- Los Angeles Times
We set a big chunk of California wilderness on fire. You're welcome
HOPLAND, Calif. — On a sun-kissed hillside in remote Northern California, I watched in awe as a crackling fire I'd helped ignite engulfed a hillside covered in tall, golden grass. Then the wind shifted slightly, and the dense gray smoke that had been billowing harmlessly up the slope turned and engulfed me. Within seconds, I was blind and coughing. The most intense heat I'd ever felt seemed like it would sear the only exposed skin on my body: my face. As the flames inched closer, to within a few feet, I backed up until I was trapped against a tall fence with nowhere left to go. Alone in that situation, I would have panicked. But I was with Len Nielson, chief of prescribed burns for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who stayed as cool as the other side of the pillow. Like a pilot calmly instructing passengers to fasten their seat belts, Nielson suggested I wrap the fire-resistant 'shroud' hanging from my bright yellow helmet around my face. Then he told me to take a few steps to the left. And, just like that, we were out of the choking smoke and into the gentle morning sunlight. The temperature seemed to have dropped a few hundred degrees. 'It became uncomfortable, but it was tolerable, right?' Nielson asked with a reassuring grin. 'Prescribed fires are a lot about trust.' Dripping gasoline onto dry grass and deliberately setting it ablaze in the California countryside felt wildly reckless, especially for someone whose job involves interviewing survivors of the state's all too frequent, catastrophic wildfires. But 'good fire,' as Nielson called it, is essential for reducing the fuel available for bad fire, the kind that makes the headlines. The principle is as ancient as it is simple. Before European settlers arrived in California and insisted on suppressing fire at every turn, the landscape burned regularly. Sometimes lightning ignited the flames; sometimes it was Indigenous people using fire as an obvious, and remarkably effective, tool to clear unwanted vegetation from their fields. Whatever the cause, it was common for much of the land in California to burn about once a decade. 'So it was relatively calm,' Nielson said, as the flames we'd set danced and swirled just a few feet behind him. 'There wasn't this big fuel load, so there wasn't a chance of it becoming really intense.' With that in mind, the state set an ambitious goal in the early 2020s to deliberately burn at least 400,000 acres of wilderness each year. The majority of that would have to be managed by the federal government, since agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service own nearly half of the state's total land. And they own more than half of the state's forests. But California officials worry their ambitious goals are likely to be thwarted by deep cuts to those federal agencies by Elon Musk's budget-whacking White House advisory team, dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. In recent months, the Forest Service has lost about 10% of its workforce to mass layoffs and firings. While firefighters were exempt from the DOGE-ordered staffing cuts, employees who handle the logistics and clear the myriad regulatory hurdles to secure permission for prescribed burns were not. 'To me, it's an objective fact that these cuts mean California will be less safe from wildfire,' said Wade Crowfoot, California's secretary of natural resources. He recalled how President Trump, in his first term, erroneously blamed the state's wildfires on state officials who, Trump said, had failed to adequately 'rake' the forests. 'Fifty-seven percent of our forests are owned and managed by the federal government,' Crowfoot said. If anybody failed, it was the president, he argued. Larry Moore, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said the job cuts won't affect the agency's fire prevention efforts. The Forest Service 'continues to ensure it has the strongest and most prepared wildland firefighting force in the world,' Moore wrote in an email. The agency's leaders are 'committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.' Nevertheless, last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom added $72 million to the state's forest management budget to bridge some of the gap expected to be left by federal agencies. But wildfire experts say that's just a drop in the bucket. Doing prescribed burns safely takes a lot of boots on the ground and behind-the-scenes cajoling to make sure local residents, and regulators, are on board. Because people get pretty testy when you accidentally smoke out an elementary school or old folks home, burn plans have to clear substantial hurdles presented by the California Environmental Quality Act and air quality regulators. It took three years to get all the required permissions for the 50-acre Hopland burn in Mendocino County, where vineyard owners worried their world-class grapes might get a little too 'smoky' for most wine lovers. When the big day finally arrived in early June, more than 60 firefighters showed up with multiple fire engines, at least one bulldozer and a firefighting helicopter on standby in case anything went wrong. They gathered at the University of California's Hopland Research and Extension Center, where students learn about ranching and wilderness ecology. But this was no school project. A fire that began in the surrounding hills a couple of years ago threatened to trap people in the center, so the area being burned was along the only two roads that could be used to escape. 'We're trying to create a buffer to get out, if we need to,' said John Bailey, the center's director. 'But we're also trying to create a buffer to prevent wildfire from coming into the center.' As the firefighters pulled on their protective yellow jackets and pants, and filled their drip torches with a mixture of diesel and gasoline, Nielson bent down and grabbed a fistful of the yellow grass. Running it through his fingers, he showed it to his deputies and they all shook their heads in disappointment — too moist. Thick marine-layer clouds filled the sky at 7 a.m, keeping the relative humidity too high for a good scorching. In many years of covering wildfires, it was the first time I had seen firefighters looking bored and disappointed because nothing would burn. By 8:45 a.m., the clouds cleared, the sun came out, and the grass in Nielson's fist began to crinkle and snap. It was time to go to work. The fire that would fill the sky and drift north that afternoon, blanketing the town of Ukiah with the familiar orange haze of fire season, began with a single firefighter walking along the edge of a cleared dirt path. As he moved, he made little dots of flame with his drip torch, drawing a line like a kid working the edges of a picture in a coloring book. Additional firefighters worked the other edges of the field until it was encircled by strips of burned black grass. That way, no matter which direction the fire went when they set the center of the field alight, the flames would not — in most circumstances — escape the relatively small test patch. On the uphill edge of the patch, along the top of a ridge, firefighters in full protective gear leaned against a wooden fence with their backs to the smoke and flames climbing the hill behind them. They'd all done this before, and they trusted those black strips of pre-burned grass to stop the fire before it got to them. Their job was to keep their eyes on the downward slope on the other side of the ridge, which wasn't supposed to burn. If they saw any embers drift past them into the 'green' zone, they would immediately move to extinguish those flames. Nielson and I were standing along the fence, too. In addition to the circle of pre-burned grass protecting us, we were on a dirt path about four feet wide. For someone with experience, that was an enormous buffer. I was the only one who even flinched when the smoke and flames came our way. Afterward, when I confessed how panicked I had felt, Nielson said it happens to a lot of people the first time they are engulfed in smoke. It's particularly dangerous in grass fires, because they move so fast. People can get completely disoriented, run the wrong way and 'get cooked,' he said. But that test patch was just the warmup act. Nielson and his crew were checking to make sure the fire would behave the way they expected — pushed in the right direction by the gentle breeze and following the slope uphill. 'If you're wondering where fire will go and how fast it will move, think of water,' he said. Water barely moves on flat ground, but it picks up speed when it goes downhill. If it gets into a steep section, where the walls close in like a funnel, it becomes a waterfall. 'Fire does the same thing, but it's a gas, so it goes the opposite direction,' Nielson said. With that and a few other pointers — we watched as three guys drew a line of fire around the base of a big, beautiful oak tree in the middle of the hillside to shield it from what was about to happen — Nielson led me to the bottom of the hill and handed me a drip torch. Once everybody was in position, and all of the safety measures had been put in place, he wanted me to help set the 'head fire,' a 6-foot wall of flame that would roar up the hill and consume dozens of acres in a matter of minutes. 'It's gonna get a little warm right here,' Nielson said, 'but it's gonna get warm for only a second.' As I leaned in with the torch and set the grass ablaze, the heat was overwhelming. While everyone else working the fire seemed nonchalant, I was tentative and terrified. My right hand stretched forward to make the dots and dashes where Nielson instructed, but my butt was sticking as far back into the road as it could get. I asked Nielson how hot he thought the flames in front of us were. 'I used to know that,' he said with a shrug. 'I want to say it's probably between 800 and 1,200 degrees.' With the hillside still burning, I peeled off all of the protective gear, hopped in a car and followed the smoke north along the 101 Freeway. By lunchtime, Ukiah, a town of 16,000 that bills itself as the gateway to the redwoods, was shrouded in haze. Everybody smelled the smoke, but prescribed burns are becoming so common in the region, nobody seemed alarmed. 'Do it!' said Judy Hyler, as she and two friends walked out of Stan's Maple Cafe. A veteran of the rampant destruction of wildfires from years past, she didn't hesitate when asked how she felt about the effort. 'I would rather it be prescribed, controlled and managed than what we've seen before.'
