FRESNO (KMJ) — Officials with the Garza Fire now have a date for when they expect the blaze will be fully surrounded.
“We feel confident we can have it contained by the 18th July,” reveals Cal Fire’s Ron Oatman. “That is the first time we’ve put that on there.”
He reveals that personnel are now boxing the flames in, to try to stop their spread. It started near Avenal in Kings County, and has now reached Fresno County.
“We use mostly bulldozers and hand crews to do that. Once that box was built then we wanted to keep the fire within that and the way we’ve done that as the fire’s burning basically to the north on its own we’ve kept up with it along the perimeter of the box we want to keep it in, those dozer lines, and we’re been firing out along those lines.
“So as the fire burns to the northwest we walk along with it, along those dozer lines, then we light our own fire so that the fire stays within those dozer lines that we put in on the north and the south.”
But the land is not easy to manage, with Oatman describing it as a “rugged area.”
“Very few areas that we can go in and put hose lines right alongside. It’s been a lot of bulldozers and a lot of hand crews….it’s definitely long hard shifts for the firefighters especially with the heat and what they’ve been doing.
“They’re working the whole time.”
The latest containment and acres burned numbers can be accessed clicking here.
Hear the report from KMJ’s Dominic McAndrew as it aired:
