Portable fire shelters protect firefighters during Dolan Fire
BIG SUR, Calif. (KION) Big Sur Smokehouse restaurant along Highway 1, as well as the rest of the coast near the Dolan Fire, saw a weird mix of fog and smoke throughout Wednesday, making for a yellowish-orange haze.
Fire officials say their defensive lines have been holding up well on the west, north and south ends of the fire, but it is the eastward direction of the fire that is still out of control.
The Dolan Fire is now over 90,000 acres and counting, with new evacuation orders on Wednesday, displacing even more homeowners in the mountains. Residents as far as Greenfield were also placed under evacuation warnings.
"I saw the commotion that was going up here and I won't be able to go up to Arroyo Seco like I normally do," said Ernest Gallardo, a Greenfield resident.
The fire is 20 percent contained, down from 40, after hot temperatures and high winds fanned the flames in new directions in the last 48 hours.
Firefighters are now focusing east as the wildfire's rapid spread threatens more structures in Arroyo Seco and Fort Hunter Liggett.
"That means trying to create defensible spaces around houses. And if conditions are right, we'll initiate some firing operations to try to stop the spread of the fire in that direction," said Jacob Welsh, a spokesperson for the Dolan Fire Incident Command Post. "The old adage: 'Fight Fire with Fire'… so we light our own fires to eliminate all the fuel between the main fire and our fire lines."
Portable fire shelters, which all wild land firefighters must carry, may have saved the lives of more than a dozen firefighters Tuesday morning, when a team quickly became surrounded by fast moving flames.
"So in your line gear, what we're always carrying in a little pouch at the bottom is a fire shelter," said Welsh.
Welsh demonstrated one out-of-commission- fire shelter, where you can deploy it quickly, enlarge it like a big blanket and cover yourself.
These fire shelters have saved lives, but they are intended as a last resort for firefighters if they are entrapped by the flames. The material reflects radiant heat, which gets very hot if the source of the heat is close. But it does not stop direct flames.
Fire officials say three firefighters who went to the hospital, one in critical condition, are doing well and recovering. Two of them have been released from the hospital, while the one in critical condition, now "stable," is expected to be released in a few days.
As the Dolan Fire rages toward the Salinas Valley, residents remain hopeful it won't get too close.
"There's a lot of vineyards in between and there's really isn't any dry vegetation, so I'm cautiously optimistic," said Gallardo.
All three states on the West Coast are seeing wildfires right now. Welsh says in his 20 years in the field, he has never seen anything like this impact the entire region before.
