Containment grows on Garnet Fire as incident enters 4th week burning in Sierra 

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – Containment is growing on the Garnet Fire as the fire’s once explosive growth is slowing down.

The Cal-Fire incident page shows that as of Monday evening, the fire is now 59,433 acres and 73% contained. 

Forest Service officials briefed the community online Monday night as the Garnet Fire stretched into its fourth week, burning in the Sierra National Forest. The fire started Aug. 24 and has been growing since.  

Ahead of the meeting, Garnet Fire Public Information Officer Austin Gonzagowski detailed their plan to keep containment growing on one of the largest fires burning in the state this year. 

“We have concentrated efforts here in the north, and that’s where the majority of our efforts have been concentrated. And that’s because we hadn’t quite tied this in together. And so we had that strategic burnout, that strategic burn operation primarily for that reason,” Gonzagowski said. 

Firefighters have been making lots of progress with the cooler temperatures Central California has seen over the past few days. Officials believe even with hotter weather coming, they are still hoping to make more progress fighting the fire. 

“With these hotter temperatures, you are going to see more smoke right behind these hotter temperatures or cooling temperatures. So we like to see the warmer temperatures, the lower r-h’s, so that we can test our lines, we can make sure that our lines are going to hold. And then the cooler temperatures right behind these will settle it back down,” Deputy Incident Commander Alex McBeth said. 

Officials said as of Monday, they’ve lowered the number of personnel assigned to the fire to 2,863 people. 

“We’re going to be less concentrating on suppression because most of that is completed. Right. And so we have good containment. We feel confident that the fire is going to hold where it currently is,” Gonzagowski said. 

Avocado Lake, which has served as the base camp for crews for weeks, is still closed to the public, and forest service officials don’t know exactly when it will open back up. 

They are packing up that base camp as they’ve moved crews closer to the fire lines, but the reopening isn’t quick. Crews compare it to shutting down a miniature city.