Burns Canyon, Rimrock residents happy to be home after evacuation
The weather played a big role in helping firefighters get the upper hand on a wildfire burning in the San Bernardino Mountains.
The monsoonal flow raise the humidity level and helped firefighter gain containment.
But thousands of acres of damage have been done and fire fighters say they are not out of the woods yet.
A campground in Burns Canyon was badly burned. A shed was scorched, the metal melted inside. The remains of a trailer are now nothing but a melted skeleton, but the cabins, made of block and steel, survived.
Meanwhile on the other side of the ridge in Rimrock, Tommy Moore is happy to be back after leaving his home, in area that was under mandatory evacuations.
“It’s a good feeling knowing that I don’t see any smoke today or yesterday, these firemen have done one heck of a job,” said Moore.
Jeff Tickel lives in Burns Canyon which was also under a mandatory evacuation, but he never left.
“As long as it stayed on that hill over there we were pretty much safe,” said Tickel who knows how lucky he is to still have a home.
“It came over the hill right here and if the wind would have changed and started blowing into the north, it would of took off over the mountain and over in this direction,” said Tickel.
Firefighters got a break when the northeast edge of the fire hit an area that burned 9 years ago during the Sawtooth Fire.
“Since it’s doing that it doesn’t have the fuel that it had in 2006 is the fire is dropping in intensity and also in the growth, because the fuels that are up there are either non-existent or very light,” said Chon Bribiescas, public information officer with the US Forest Service.
Now firefighters are worried about the possibilty of lightning sparking a blaze.
“There is always a backside, always two sides to something, the monsoonal flow brings us humidity and brings us rain, but it also brings thunder and lightning. So as long as the lightning and thunder comes with wetting rains, we should be in pretty good shape, what we don’t want is dry lightning, but we are prepared for it,” said Bribiescas.
