CAL FIRE BEU performs prescribed burn near Big Sur

BIG SUR, Calif. (KION-TV)- Tuesday, CAL FIRE performed a 90-acre prescribed burn near Big Sur.

It comes just two days after the Aguajito Fire forced evacuations. We wanted to know if conditions improved enough for a controlled burn.

“The temperatures that we have down here are completely different from the temperatures that we have where the Aguajito incident is," said CAL FIRE Captain Shayon Ascarie

Those better conditions allow Tuesday's prescribed burn here at Andrew Molera State Park.

“We want to have the wind in our favor, which it currently is, and we want to have lower RHS, but at the same time, we do not want our RHS to be too high so that the fire will not travel,” said Ascarie.  

The wind is a tool that cal fire uses to help move the fire where they want it to go.

“We are using the wind in our favor to do a backing fire, which will be bringing fire back towards the coastline,” said Ascarie.  

Besides the weather, CAL FIRE also needs the manpower for a prescribed burn, which can be impacted if there are large incidents elsewhere in the state.
 

If CAL FIRE does not have the manpower or the weather on their side, they cannot put fire on the ground and have to wait for the conditions to align again for their next chance. however, Tuesday's conditions allowed for this

There were over 100 firefighters assigned to this control burn today from different agencies across the central coast.