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Evacuation orders may be lifted soon for Gasquet, but the local district ranger said officials feared the Slater Fire would have reached that community by noon the day its residents were told to leave their homes.

As of Tuesday, Gasquet residents, along with those in Big Flat, are at a Level 1 “Be Ready” evacuation order, Jeff Marszal, Gasquet district ranger for the Six Rivers National Forest, told Del Norte County supervisors. However, he said, he expects those orders to be lifted soon.

“I’m meeting with the Del Norte County sheriff and fire management officials,” he said. “We’ll probably be lifting that Level 1 (order) considering where we are in the fire.”

The Slater Fire started near Happy Camp on Sept. 8 and burned into Del Norte County by the morning of Sept. 9, a distance of about 15 miles, Marszal said. It crossed the Oregon state line, U.S. 199 and entered the Smith River National Recreation Area near Collier Tunnel, prompting emergency officials to evacuate Gasquet at about 6 a.m. Sept. 9.

The Slater Fire also forced Caltrans to shut U.S. 199 down as they removed to clear fallen trees and other debris near the tunnel. The highway reopened to traffic on Saturday.

Fortunately the fire hasn't reached Gasquet, Marszal said, but it did claim more than 150 homes in the Happy Camp area and caused the deaths of two people. In Del Norte County, the fire destroyed two homes on the far side of the tunnel, he said, but the Collier Tunnel Rest Area and the agricultural station still stand.

“This was an extreme fire event,” Marszal told supervisors. “It was driven by extreme wind, heat and historically dry fuels. It was a terrible 24 hours for Happy Camp — I used to live there.”

The Slater Fire is at an estimated 148,677 acres and is 22 percent contained as of Tuesday, according to an update on InciWeb. The nearby Devil Fire is at 7,458 acres and is 18 percent contained.

Most of the fire, about 75,000 acres, is in the Klamath National Forest, Marszal said. About 55,000 acres on the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest has burned. The Slater Fire has also impacted 12,000 acres of private land, including 5,000 acres belonging to Green Diamond. Roughly 2,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land has been burned, Marszal said.

The Slater Fire has burned about 4,186 acres in the Smith River National Recreation Area, Marszal said. the Northern Rockies Incident Management Team 2 is managing the fire’s northwest corner, which includes the California and Oregon sides of U.S. 199, he said.

When the fire entered Del Norte County it got caught up on the Oregon Mountain Road and Knopki Creek areas and hasn’t moved, Marszal said Tuesday. All available fire resources are concentrated on the Knopki Road area in the south side of the fire.

Meanwhile on the opposite side of U.S. 199 firefighters have used dozers to try to contain the fire near Monkey Ridge, protecting transmission lines and a communications site in the area, Marszal said.

“Because of the unprecedented nature of this fire season up and down the Pacific Coast, we’ve struggled with getting resources on this fire,” Marszal said. “We’ve been completely dependent on local resources — that’s Gasquet resources and definitely our local Gasquet volunteers, Crescent City, Fort Dick and up into Brookings Harbor. They’re all volunteers that have provided the backbone of resources over the past 7-10 days and we cannot thank them enough. They really do deserve a lot of credit.”

Marszal said he expects additional resources coming to help with the Slater Fire.

Rain is also forecasted for Wednesday and Thursday, which will bring relief to the fire, Marszal said, though sunny and dry conditions are expected for the weekend.

Meanwhile, in other matters, the Del Norte Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the Del Norte County Fire Safe Council’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The plan updates a previous document from 2005 and focuses on educating communities about wildfires and how they can defend themselves.

Completing the plan by Dec. 31 is necessary for the Del Norte Fire Safe Council to receive California State Fire Assistance grant dollars, according to Fire Safe Council treasurer, Becky Barlow.

Documents

• Wildfire Protection Plan 2020

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