BIG BEAR LAKE: Summit Fire re-mapped at 55 acres (UPDATE)
Since the fire started Sunday, firefighters have been concerned with the steep terrain and heavy timber in the fire area.
RICHARD BROOKS / STAFF WRITER
Three days after flames threatened hundreds of mountain homes near Big Bear Lake, forestry officials said the brush-and-timber blaze blackened 55 acres, down from their previous estimate of 100.
"We walked the perimeter of the fire today and mapped it," San Bernardino National Forest spokesman Chon Bribiescas said Wednesday, Aug. 26.
By early evening, crews had dug fire lines around 65 percent of the perimeter.
The blaze began at 12:25 p.m. Sunday in a ravine east of forest road 2N08 and inside the national forest about a half-mile south of the nearest homes in Big Bear Lake.
The cause hasn't been determined.
Called the Summit Fire, it forced the closure of nearby Snow Summit Mountain Resort, which is scheduled to re-open a scenic chair lift, bike park and the View Haus restaurant on Thursday.
The flames have been gone since Tuesday, said Bribiescas. But it may take another two weeks to extinguish the fire, he said, emphasizing that the lack of open fire is misleading because that smoldering section of the forest is still so hot.
Despite it's comparatively small size, the fire has been particularly troublesome because the steep, rugged terrain is heavily dotted with dead and dangerously weakened, standing trees that firefighters call snags.
"There are...snags that are holding heat. We call them cigars: We can see them smoking," Bribiescas said. "A lot of times, we can only see them in the distance, (because) we are not going into the interior.
"Once things cool down, we're going to mop up from the perimeter into the interior. It's very steep, and there's a lot of heavy timber in there that was dead (before the fire). When the tops of those fall off, sometimes you can't hear it. It's very dangerous."
Historically, falling snags have killed many firefighters. And that portion of the forest is so overgrown that it had been scheduled to be thinned out.
But now that the fire had laid down, officials are trying to release crews, yet protect the ones still assigned to the fire.
Because of the rugged terrain and the danger of falling snags, firefighters are not working at night. And with huge fires burning elsewhere in California and throughout the Pacific Northwest, crews are being released from Big Bear Lake.
By Wednesday evening, 250 firefighters were still assigned to the Summit Fire, down from 311 on Tuesday.
http://www.pe.com/articles/fire-778066-firefighters-bribiescas.html
