SAN JOSE, Calif. — Evacuation orders were lifted for hundreds of people and Highway 1 was fully reopened Wednesday after firefighters contained 55% of the Colorado Fire, which was sparked along the Big Sur coast Friday afternoon, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The cause of the Monterey County fire, which was announced in a Cal Fire investigation on Tuesday, was attributed to hot embers from a pile burning operation.
“High winds blew the embers onto nearby vegetation, which ignited the fire,” officials said in the news release.
Evacuation orders for 500 people were lifted by noon, according to Cal Fire spokesperson Cecile Juliette. Highway 1, which was previously closed from Garrapata Creek to Point Sur, was also reopened; flames burned about 700 acres, damaged one yurt and threatened more than 200 structures. On Wednesday, 53 engines and 479 personnel were at the scene and firefighters were continuing to mop up hot spots.
Juliette said that although law enforcement contacted 500 people to be evacuated, officials believed some people stayed behind. She emphasized that there would be intermittent traffic delays on Highway 1 due to heavy equipment in the area.
“Even though the highway is open people still need to be really careful and just drive slowly,” Juliette said, adding that the fire activity was “minimal” overnight, the weather is “more favorable” on Wednesday and firefighters are being “very aggressive” in fighting the blaze.
Lighter wind gusts, growing humidity levels and “gradually improving” conditions have aided firefighters trying to contain the flames, according to National Weather Service forecaster David King.
Humidity levels are forecast to be 40% to 50% at minimum on Wednesday before reaching 60% to 70% overnight. The marine layer, the air mass that develops near a large body of water, was “pretty compressed” so firefighters won’t receive as much moisture from the ocean and fog as they did in previous days when it was foggier, according to King.
Offshore winds, however, are expected to be “fairly light,” hovering between 5 to 10 mph through Friday. Temperatures are also expected to range in the low 60s to the upper 50s in the higher elevations near Big Sur.
“For the next few days through Friday, it should be favorable to help fight the fire from a weather perspective,” he said.
The fire was the first time in at least a decade that flames burned more than 100 acres in this area of the state, according to Juliette. And despite a relatively plentiful water year, which began Oct .1, a recent dry spell that is expected to linger through the end of the month restarted the fire season Friday.
“If you just look at the total amount of water in the water year, it looks like a really nice number that’s beneficial,” King said. “But if you hone in on the data and see we’ve received so much of the rain and water upfront with that massive atmospheric river event in October, and it’s been very, very dry late December into January, that tells a different story. It says that we’ve had time for soils to absorb that moisture and for the finer fuels above the moisture to be dried out by the sun. You can get these areas where it’s dry and where one fire starts, it can go.”
Big Sur received more than 14 inches of rain in December, compared to 9.18 inches it usually receives in that time period based on historical averages, according to the National Weather Service. However, the area received less than an inch of rain so far in January, compared to the around seven inches it usually receives this time of year.
Although the bulk of California’s wildfire season is focused during the summer months, in addition to September and October, California’s long-term drought and climate change have made winter wildfires more common in recent years.
“When we think of fire season here, it’s typically September and October, but it’s not completely unheard of in January,” King said. “The Santa Ana winds down in Los Angeles into San Diego, that regularly happens in December and January, and if the weather allows for it, if it shifts west, it puts the San Francisco Bay Area into that region. We’ve had fires and offshore wind events in January before, they’re just a little bit more on the rare side.”
Juliette raised the importance of Californians being prepared to evacuate due to fire risk year-round.
“We did get some pretty good moisture in the season and yet we still got this fire, which just speaks to how dry the vegetation is,” she said. “If this is happening in January after pretty serious rain, who knows what’s to come. Everybody needs to be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice, and I mean everybody.”
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