The Garnet Fire is almost fully contained: ‘We are heavily focusing on suppression’

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – It’s been nearly a month since the Garnet Fire erupted in the Sierra National Forest. On Saturday morning, all evacuation orders were lifted, with some evacuation warnings still in place. As of Saturday evening, containment was up to 99% with 60,263 acres burned. But even if containment reaches 100%, that doesn’t mean the work ends.

“We had some rain come through that kind of slowed operations down yesterday and today they’re starting to pick back up. We are heavily focusing on suppression repair right now,” Garnet Fire information officer Shannon Colon said.

All that’s left for fire crews to contain is an area near McKinley Grove Road.

“They’re basically mopping up and they’re building depth in the areas that need it so that we can call that contained. Sometimes it can be a couple of days. It might be a little longer. It just depends on how many hot pockets they find,” Colon said.

Even after fire crews contain the fire, that won’t mean the fire is completely out.

“There are going to be hot pockets all within this area for a while and they’re going to burn out themselves. That’s not something that we’re going to go in and really mop up because it’s so far within the containment zone. So there is going to be smoke coming up eventually from that,” Colon said.

Firefighters still need to go inside the containment zone and clean up the mess left behind.

“It’s definitely going to take a couple of months. It’s not something that can be done overnight…making sure that when it rains that we’re not having areas that are flooding or like puddles just sitting, They want everything to flow through naturally,” Colon said.

But the good news is that containment and clean up won’t require more people.

“We are going to call in, you know, have more heavy equipment that’s needed to do some of these repairs. But overall, you’re not going to see a climb in personnel,” Colon said.