U.S. Forest Service press release:

Total Personnel: 515, Crews: 7, Engines: 16, Dozers: 5, Masticators: 12 Water, Tenders: 8, Aircraft: 5

Containment increased to 15 percent, the fire remains at 57,038 acres. Great Basin Team 7 has taken command of the fire and continues to implement the plan developed by Great Basin Team 3, Six Rivers NF, Klamath NF and the Karuk Tribe.

The arrival of Chena Hotshots yesterday, along with favorable weather allowed small-scale firing operations to occur north of the spot fire in the Buckhorn Bear area. They were able to burn along existing roads and dozer line towards Elk Creek Road. Firefighters will continue working towards Elk Creek Road today.

The Highway 96 Structure Group continues working with a local firefighting crew to perform mitigation work around cultural sites along the highway corridor. The Elk Creek Structure Group continues to reopen old dozer and hand lines on the southern end of Happy Camp near Curly Jack and Elk Creek campgrounds.

Firefighters are preparing for changing weather and future wind events. Today, a southerly flow will bring increased winds from the southwest that have the potential to push the fire northward.

No Drone Zone: A temporary flight restriction (TFR) remains in place. If you fly, we must ground all aircraft. A TFR also applies to unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones. To find information about the TFR, visit https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_1_0033.html.

Smoke:  For air quality information go to https://fire.airnow.gov or https://bit.ly/SiskiyouWildfireSmoke.

Evacuations:  For the most current and accurate evacuation information for Siskiyou County, please visit the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page at: @SiskiyouCountySheriff or the county evacuation map at https://bit.ly/SiskiyouEvacMap. All residents are encouraged to sign up for CodeRED Emergency Alert at: https://bit.ly/CodeRedSiskiyou

Road Closures: Caltrans info at 1-800-427-7623 or https://roads.dot.ca.gov/

Visit the following sites for specific Forest Closure information:

U.S. Forest Service Region 5 https://bit.ly/R5ForestClosures

Six Rivers National Forest https://bit.ly/SRNFNotices

Klamath NationalForest https://bit.ly/KNFNotices 

For further information about the McCash Fire, please visit the following links: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7757/ 

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In nearly every way, Larry Elder appears to be the candidate that the California Republican Party has been waiting for.

The party hasn’t won a statewide election since 2006. Its base of supporters has been gradually whittled down to an ever whiter and older demographic in one of the country’s most diverse states.

Now here comes Elder, offering something different. A longtime conservative talk radio host in Los Angeles, he is the most credible Black candidate for governor since the 1980s in a state that has never had one.

Throughout his short campaign, Elder has made explicit efforts to reach out to communities who have not traditionally found a home in the GOP. In press conferences, Elder has prioritized reporters from Chinese-language and Latino-focused media outlets and underscored endorsements from political leaders of color, including a former Democratic state Senate leader.

And he’s told and retold the story of his hardscrabble upbringing — as a boast, but also an appeal to voters who rarely see their own biographies among Republican frontrunners. “I’m from the ’hood,” Elder told CalMatters in a recent interview. “It seems to me that I ought to be a success story.”

The latest polls suggest that Gov. Gavin Newsom will survive the Sept. 14 recall. But if it succeeds, Elder — the top-polling replacement candidate — could pull off the unlikeliest of success stories and become California’s next governor.

Still, if there’s one thing standing in Elder’s way of reshaping the California Republican Party, his critics say, it might be this: What he believes and says.

‘Do I look like a white supremacist?’

Since hitting the AM airwaves in the early 1990s, Elder has built his brand around a Libertarian economic philosophy and his deeply-held belief that liberals and Democrats overstate the role of race and racism in American life. That brand helped Elder quickly leap-frog more traditional GOP hopefuls in the recall, including former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and the party’s 2018 gubernatorial candidate John Cox.

But Elder’s pugnacious conservatism has also made it easy for Newsom and his defenders to portray him as the latest face of “Trumpism” — “he’s even more extreme than Trump,” the governor said recently.

Much of California’s political establishment has the same take. Newspaper editorial boards have denounced his “extremist views” and “misogynistic attitudes.” A columnist with the Los Angeles Times wrote last month that Elder “opposes every single public policy idea that’s supported by Black people to help Black people” and labeled him “the Black face of white supremacy.”

Elder’s camp has highlighted the disapproval of the commentariat as an indication of his anti-establishment cred, but he has also pushed back. “Do I look like a white supremacist?” he said in a recent campaign ad. “I walked those hard streets.”

But most statewide surveys show that Elder polls like a typical Republican candidate: He is less popular with Latino, Black and Asian voters than he is with whites.

That doesn’t surprise Matt Barreto, founder of UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Initiative.

“If Larry Elder had run on a very welcoming racial unity message, he could have presented himself as a different type of Republican,” he said. “He’s just not the candidate who says ‘racial unity’ to voters.”

Elder’s pitch to voters

Last week, Elder held an especially unlikely kind of press conference. He was endorsed on Zoom by former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, long perceived to be a moderate Republican, and former state Senate leader Gloria Romero, a Democrat.

The event was also unusual in its appeal. Elder rattled off his long-held positions on education (parents should have more options and teachers’ unions are blocking needed reforms) and crime (state laws are too lax). But he repeatedly emphasized how those views ought to appeal to Black and Latino Californians.

“I do believe that the impact of the poor quality of education disproportionately hurts Black and brown people,” Elder said. “Crime disproportionately affects people living in the inner city, many of whom…are the Black and brown people that the left claims that they care about.”

When it came time for questions for the man who has spent much of his adult life opposing affirmative action, reporters “representing the Latino communities” were given priority.

Both Maldonado and Romero pointed to Elder’s background as evidence of his credibility. Sacramento politics needs to be “shaken up,” said Maldonado, the last Republican to be lieutenant governor, in 2010-11. And who could be in a better position to do that shaking than “a brother from South Central Los Angeles?”

In an earlier interview, Romero said she does not agree with Elder on many issues. But she was drawn to his candidacy for his support for charter schools and his criticism of teachers’ unions, but also his “lived experience.”

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t necessarily see a Cox or a Faulconer really motivating African-American youth,” she said.

Romero lambasts Newsom and the state’s Democratic leadership, but she bristles at the notion that she no longer belongs in the party. “Nobody’s going to bully me out,” she said. “I’m waiting for someone to call me ‘the Latino face of white supremacy.’”

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t necessarily see a Cox or a Faulconer really motivating African-American youth.”
— Gloria Romero, a former State Senate leader and Democrat endorsing Elder

Elder’s outreach to traditionally Democratic Latino and Asian American voters isn’t lost on the Newsom campaign, which did some counterprogramming the very same day. Newsom held a press conference with Rob Bonta, whom he appointed as the state’s first Filipino-American attorney general, along with other Asian-American political leaders. The next day, Latino Democrats in the Legislature and the California Latino PAC posted a video urging voters to reject the recall. Newsom, himself, went to San Francisco’s Chinatown, where he campaigned with Bonta, ate dim sum and accused Republicans of bigotry.

The campaigns already have an eye on the regular election for governor in 2022. Win or lose in the recall, Elder will need to make inroads with Latinos and Asians and disaffected Democrats to have much hope of cobbling together a majority in a state where Republicans (24%) are vastly outnumbered by Democrats (46%) and no party preference voters (23%).

Predicting a racial realignment

Ward Connerly — who spearheaded the 1996 Proposition 209 campaign to ban racial preferences in public employment, education and contracting in California and co-led the successful effort to defend the law against Prop. 16 last year — said he’s hopeful that Elder’s campaign will continue what he sees as a trend of voters of colors rethinking their historic support of the Democratic Party.

“These are people who have been ignored,” said Connerly, who said he encouraged Elder to enter the race.

Connerly, who has identified as both Black and mixed race, said there’s a “silent majority” in California “that voted in favor of (Proposition) 209, voted to reject Prop. 16, that are frustrated by this condition they perceive their state to be in — white, Latino, Chinese, successful Blacks.”

Chinese-American community organizers were among the most vocal and prominent organizers against Prop. 16, breaking ranks with Newsom and Democratic leaders who supported the measure.

Some of those organizers have now found a new cause in Elder’s candidacy, including Ying Ma, the No campaign’s spokesperson who is now Elder’s press chief.

Elder repeated the multiracial silent majority theme over the weekend in his latest interview on Fox News, in which he lamented the criticism he’s received from liberal opinion writers. “They’re deathly afraid that Larry Elder, a Black guy from the ’hood who went to public school, might break the stranglehold that the Democrats have had on Black and brown voters here in California,” he said.

But the notion that significant numbers of voters of color are on the verge of supporting an arch-conservative like Elder doesn’t sound credible to Manuel Pastor, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California.

“The Republican brand is in permanent decline in the state, particularly the more it associates itself with Trump, anti-vax, anti-mask,” he said.

(Elder is vaccinated, but opposes vaccine and mask mandates. He is also a consistent supporter of the former president.)

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is also skeptical of Elder’s outreach strategy. A political commentator and author who has occasionally found himself on the opposite side of the debate stage from Elder over the years, Hutchinson said by email that “no amount of pandering by Elder to (Black voters) will up his Black support.”

“Now if he were a Democrat, even with his primitive right-wing hype, that might change somewhat,” Hutchinson wrote. “But that ain’t the case.”

“No amount of pandering by Elder to (Black voters) will up his Black support.”
— Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a political commentator and Elder critic

Last month, the anti-recall campaign organized a virtual press conference of the state’s most prominent Black politicians: U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee and Karen Bass, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, state schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond and Board of Equalization member Malia Cohen.

The digital meetup was divided equally between praising Newsom and bashing Elder. While Newsom has “always put the needs of our communities, and in particular the needs of African Americans, forward,” Thurmond said, “Larry Elder has spent his entire career trying to erase it.”

Cohen was more succinct: “We know that not all skin folk are kinfolk.”

‘The core of what I believe’

For as long as Elder has been a public persona — and for much longer than that, as Elder tells it — his views on politics, race and racism have set him apart from his peers.

Elder’s father Randolph, who ran a cafe, was the only Republican that Elder knew in their mostly Black neighborhood in South Central L.A. His mother, Viola, was a Democrat, but held conservative views on immigration and welfare.

“I came from a household where people believe in hard work, in less government, in lower taxes,” Elder said in his CalMatters interview. “And one of the things both my mom and my dad strongly agreed on was their hostility to what they call the welfare state.”

Elder’s parents also taught their three sons to put their faith in personal responsibility. He quotes his father in his 2018 biography: “No matter how bad things are, you have a responsibility to try.”

That apparently extended to racism. “We didn’t want them to use race as a crutch,” Viola, who died 15 years ago, told a Los Angeles Times reporter in 1998.

That was an outlier view for a student at Crenshaw High School in 1970.

“I came from a household where people believe in hard work, in less government, in lower taxes.”
— Larry Elder, in a Calmatters interview

Jack Shu — who was a member of the Knights Service and Honor Club with Elder in their senior year and who now serves as vice mayor of La Mesa in San Diego County — said he recalls that the school was riven by “student strikes, demonstrations (and) an atmosphere of anti-white sentiment.”

“Within the Knights Club, there were no divisions due to race,” said Shu, who does not remember Elder.

Elder recalls even then gravitating toward the politics of self-reliance. Speaking to the libertarian Reason magazine in 1995, he remembers scolding his fellow classmates in a report on Booker T. Washington for calling the Black critic of racial agitation an “Uncle Tom.”

“He used to talk about self help and not relying on government and hard work wins,” Elder said. “That philosophy is the core of what I believe right now.”

The rest of his political education, Elder attributes to his time at Brown University, the Ivy League school in Rhode Island.

“I think I remember feeling, at one point, that we should have socialized medicine until I took economics and realized that the best way of improving the quality of anything is competition,” he told CalMatters.

In the early 1970s, Brown had only recently introduced an affirmative action program — something that Elder has said he benefited from — and the campus was a hotbed of civil rights activism, recalls Vincent Thomas, who was a year ahead of Elder and was friendly with Elder’s roommate.

Elder, however, was not a part of that scene, said Thomas, who started the first radio program for a Black audience in Providence, R.I. “He was sort of to himself,” he recalled. “He just didn’t march to that drummer…he didn’t really come to the Afro meetings.”

It wasn’t until the early 1990s that Elder — after getting a law degree, working at a well-heeled Cleveland law firm and then running his own legal headhunting company — got his first gig as a professional opinionator.

“He was controversial in the way I wanted our people to be controversial,” said George Green, the former general manager at KABC in Los Angeles. Elder came recommended by Dennis Prager, another conservative host at the station. But Green said Elder’s appeal wasn’t his politics, but his skill and style: “Extremely talented, flexible, controversial but not obnoxious.”

“Hiring Larry had nothing to do with his color,” Green added. “Though being Black, he happened to be extremely popular in all the minority communities.”

William Darity, a Duke University economics professor who studies racial inequality and who was also in Elder’s class at Brown, said race is at the core of Elder’s popularity, but not because of his appeal with minority communities.

“There are many, many people who subscribe to this view that the social groups who are in a disadvantaged position are there because of a pattern of dysfunctional behavior. And they are thrilled to see someone Black saying that,” said Darity. “He’s giving them cover.”

Among Elder’s most inflammatory and long-held views is that public assistance programs encourage women “to marry the government” and men “to abandon their financial and moral responsibility.” There’s also his belief that the public sector should play as limited a role as possible in education and his advocacy for a flat tax.

“The police are being unfairly maligned by this false assertion that they’re engaging in systemic racism.”
— Larry Elder, in a press conference aimed at Latino voters

But the issues that have raised — and continue to raise — the most ire from the left are his views on race. He regularly rails against the idea that bigotry plays a major role in the lives of Black and brown communities.

Take the latest snippet of tape unearthed and passed around on social media by Elder’s aghast political opponents: A discussion with fellow Black conservative firebrand Candace Owens about slavery.

“Like it or not, slavery was legal,” Elder said on her show in April 2019. “So you could make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just Black people, but also the people whose, quote, property, closed quote, was taken away after the end of the Civil War.”

Elder has also identified a regular list of malefactors who, he argues, undermine Black and brown achievement by setting low expectations and devaluing responsibility: Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, the entire Black Lives Matter movement.

“The police are being unfairly maligned by this false assertion that they’re engaging in systemic racism,” Elder said at last week’s press conference. “If anything the studies show that the police are more hesitant, more reluctant, to pull the trigger on a Black suspect.” (Though police shooting data is limited, that claim isn’t supported by most research on the subject.)

Elder doesn’t view that kind of rhetoric as anti-Black, but as a kind of empowering tough love.

That tension came to the fore when Elder spoke last month to Los Angeles-based progressive Black radio host Tavis Smiley.

After Elder spent the first minutes of the interview listing the ways in which he believes the state’s public education system, its environmental regulations and its criminal justice system have disproportionately harmed Black families, Smiley suggested that Elder might be pandering.

“I don’t think I’ve asked you a question yet about Black folk in particular and yet every stat you’ve given me has been a Black stat. Why you always giving Black stats?” Smiley asked.

“Because I have a particular concern about Black people in America,” Elder replied. “I would have thought you would have been concerned about that as well.”

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CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Rita Wheeler Moore passed away July 9, 2021 after a brief illness. Rita was born in Phoenix, Ariz on September 12, 1958 to Eugene and Gloria Wheeler. She graduated from Most Holy Trinity School in Sunnyslope in 1972 and Washington High School in Phoenix in 1975. She attended Glendale Community College until she joined the Air Force.

Rita moved to Humboldt County when she left the Air Force. After moving to Eureka, she became active in the community. She graduated from Humboldt State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree specializing in Religious and Women’s Studies. She was active with the Women’s Studies program, now Critical Race, Gender and Sexuality Studies, where she participated in many related activities becoming an activist for gender equality. Rita volunteered with the Red Cross and had the opportunity to help with hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. What Rita is best known for and was most proud of was her 30 years of work as a swim instructor across Humboldt County. She was most passionate about her special students and her work with the Special Olympics swimming program. The families of her swimmers referred to her as “The Swim Whisperer” for her dedication and success. Everybody in the area knew her as “Grandma Rita.”

Rita was preceded in death by her husband Randy Moore, their sons Benjamin and Scott, and father Eugene. She is survived by her son Tim, daughter Pamela, four grandchildren: Dameon, Ericka, Jordan and Jasper, mother Gloria, eight siblings: Kathy, Matt, Ann, Angela, Pat, Ray, Theresa, and Mike, as well as many nieces and nephews.

There will be an informal Memorial Gathering honoring Rita at Redwood Park in Arcata, CA on September 11, 2021 from 1 until 4 p.m. Please stop by, see friends, share memories and stories with one another and Rita’s family. Bring a picnic. Celebrate Rita’s life. Because some family and friends are at high medical risk, wearing a mask when indoors at the park lodge is requested.

A private memorial and interment will be held at Saint Mary’s Cemetery at a different time for Rita’s family.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating in Rita’s honor to the Humboldt County Special Olympics Swim Team through sonc.org or to the Laurel Tree Charter School in Arcata through laureltreecs.org.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Rita Moore’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.

UPDATE: Mr. Wahl has been found safe, says the EPD.

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From the Eureka Police Department:

The Eureka Police Department is asking for the public’s assistance in locating a 89-year- old missing male, Carl Wahl.

Wahl was last seen at an assisted living facility at the 1300 block of Myrtle Avenue. He was last seen on September 6, 2021 at about 5:30 p.m. Wahl is 89 years old, about 5’10”, thin build. He was last seen wearing a black hat, blue jacket, and blue jeans.

Anyone with information regarding Wahl’s possible whereabouts is asked to contact the Eureka Police Department at (707) 441-4044.

Calfire Humboldt-Del Norte Unit:

This morning, multiple air and ground resources responded to a vegetation fire reported at Table Bluff County Park near Loleta.

The fire burned over 4 acres and required resources to be committed for several hours.

An unextinguished campfire is suspected of causing the fire. Evidence of illegal wood cutting was also observed.

Abandoned campfires unfortunately become more prevalent in the fall. Cooler temperatures lead to more warming fires. It is important to completely extinguish all campfires until they’re cool to the touch at any time of the year.

U.S. Forest Service press release:

COMMUNITY MEETING: On Monday, September 6, at 8 p.m., a virtual community meeting for the Monument and Knob fires will be livestreamed on the Shasta-Trinity and Six Rivers National Forests’ Facebook pages. Prior to the meeting, submit questions about either fire to 2021.monument@firenet.gov.

MONUMENT FIRE:

Resources: 2,053 personnel, 37 hand crews, 126 engines, 4 helicopters, 38 dozers, 42 water tenders, 30 masticators

Current Situation: The Monument Fire is approximately 183,371 acres and 37% contained. Suppression efforts will be implemented to protect the values within the Trinity Alps Wilderness, the Trinity Wild and Scenic River, Inventoried Roadless areas and habitat for anadromous fish and other endangered and sensitive species. With control objectives achieved around the Hayfork area, the fire will no longer be in Unified Command. California Incident Management Team 5 will continue to coordinate suppression efforts with CAL FIRE’s Shasta Unit. CAL FIRE resources will continue patrolling and mopping up in the Hayfork area.

As containment increases on the Knob Fire, fire managers will shift firefighting resources to the southwest perimeter of the Monument Fire. The highest priority will be to secure the containment line along Hyampom Road. Over the next 5 to 7 days, hotshot crews will be conducting firing operations along Hyampom Road in order to reduce the available fuel in front of the advancing fire. The firing operations will intermittently restrict vehicle access into Hyampom.

Today, on the southwest perimeter, crews continue to improve containment lines along Hyampom Road for the planned firing operation. They are also working along Pattison Ridge to keep the fire in check as it moves downslope towards the Hyampom Road. On the northeast side at the North Fork Trinity River, resources continue to complete a section of handline along Backbone Ridge. The fire has not crossed to the eastern bank of the North Fork Trinity River and crews will continue to monitor fire activity. In all other areas of the fire, crews will continue to monitor and patrol existing containment lines and extinguish any hot spots.

KNOB FIRE:

Resources: 222 personnel, 7 hand crews, 23 engines, 3 dozers, 2 water tenders.

Current Situation: The Knob Fire is approximately 2,414 acres and 82% contained. Fire behavior was minimal throughout the night and crews continued to patrol and mop up hot spots within the existing containment lines. Today, crews will continue to strengthen existing containment lines and patrol for any hot spots 300 feet within the fire perimeter area.

WEATHER AND FIRE BEHAVIOR: A strengthening high pressure system remains over the area bringing hotter and drier conditions. Ridgetop temperatures may reach 90 degrees and humidity will be in the single digits. These conditions, combined with expected wind gusts of 20 mph, have the potential to increase fire activity.

ROAD RESTRICTIONS AND CLOSURES:

Monument Fire:

• A segment of State Route 299 - from Mile Post 36.3 (just west of Helena) to Mile Post 7.4 (near Burnt Ranch at Berg Road) - is open to through traffic and residents on the following schedule: Monday through Sunday, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., an escort vehicle leads traffic through the closure every 1.5 hours. Exception: On Monday, September 6, the escort will operate every hour from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Overnight, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., the road is open only to residents with proof of address. 
• Northeast of Hayfork: Big Creek Road, Barker Valley Road, Barker Creek Road, and Carr Creek Road 
• West of Junction City: Big French Creek Road, Big Mountain Road, and Soldier Creek Road 
• South of Willow Creek: Hodgson Road, Burwood Drive, Panther Road, and Butterfly Creek Road

Knob Fire:  

• China Creek Road at Hodgson Road, Burwood Drive, Gypo Lane, Friday Ridge Road, Panther Road and Butterfly Road.

MONUMENT FIRE EVACUATIONS:

• Order: Helena/East Fork Road, Hobo Gulch Road, Big Mountain Road, and Big French Creek Road.
• Warning: Denny Road east from Ziegler Point Road through Denny to the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area boundary 
• Warning: Section of Campbell Ridge Road and Woods Lane near the Trinity River along the Humboldt/Trinity County line
• Warning: Canyon Creek Road in Junction City
• Trinity County evacuation information: Trinity County Sheriff’s Office Facebook, 530-623-2611

KNOB FIRE EVACUATIONS:

• Order: Areas east of Brushy Mountain Lookout Road/FS Road 6N08A to State Route 299, south of Victor Creek to China Creek
• Order: Areas east of Brushy Mountain Lookout Road/FS Road 6N08A to the eastern perimeter of the Knob Fire south of China Creek to Friday Ridge Road
• Order: Areas east of Brushy Mountain Lookout Road/FS 6N08A to the South Fork Trinity River, south of Friday Ridge Road to the end of the FS Road 6N20
• Warning: Areas of Boise Creek to the Humboldt/Trinity County line, south of the Trinity River to Victor Creek 
• Warning: Areas east of Highway 299 to the Humboldt/Trinity County line, south of Victor Creek to China Creek
• Warning: Areas east of the Knob Fire perimeter to the Humboldt/Trinity County line, south of China Creek to Friday Ridge Road
• Humboldt County evacuation information: humboldtsheriff.org, tinyurl.com/humcoevacmap, 707-268-2500

EVACUATION CENTERS:

• McKinleyville Seventh Day Adventist, 1200 Central Avenue, McKinleyville
• Fireman’s Hall Pavilion, 9 Park Street, Fortuna
• First Baptist Church, 1261 Main Street, Weaverville

FOREST CLOSURE: The USDA Forest Service has temporarily closed all National Forests in California. Direct your questions to 707-562-9113 or SM.FS.R5inquiries@usda.gov.

U.S. Forest Service press release:

Total Personnel: 489
Crews: 6
Engines: 19
Dozers: 5
Masticators: 10
Water Tenders: 8
Aircraft: 5

An infrared flight over the McCash Fire showed the fire is 57,038 acres. The fire is 13 percent contained thanks to weeks of hard work by firefighters. There are 489 people assigned to the incident. 

Today is a shadow day for Great Basin Team 7, the incoming Type 2 incident management team. Team 7 will work with their counterparts from Great Basin Team 3 to learn about the ongoing operations to suppress the McCash Fire. Team 3 will transfer command of the fire to Team 7 on Tuesday at 7 a.m.

Several sections of fire line were declared contained at the end of shift yesterday. These sections include Carter Creek Road to Ukonom Lookout; Dutch Creek to Independence/Ferry Point along banks of the Klamath River; and Independence/Ferry Point to the midpoint of the northern containment line.

The fire continues to move to the east along the containment line in the area of Johnson Hunting Ground. Crews will work today to limit the fire’s spread to the north, identifying hotspots along the containment line and extinguishing them. Crews continue to improve the Chicken Ladder Road (15N13) and Titus Ridge Road (15N10) by hand and with heavy equipment.

The Highway 96 Structure Group worked yesterday with a local firefighting crew to perform mitigation work around cultural sites along the highway corridor. They will continue this work today. Patrols will also continue along the highway to identify any possible spot fires west of the road. To date, no spot fires have been detected west of the Klamath River or the highway.

Firefighters continue to have success with the slow, small-scale firing operation north of the spot fire in the Buckhorn Bear area. Depending on weather conditions today, they will fire off segments of vegetation along the existing roads and dozer line working to the west toward Elk Creek Road. An alternative contingency line is also being created from Frying Pan Ridge to Grider Ridge using a grader and masticator. Both operations are expected to take a few more days to finish.

Yesterday, the Elk Creek Structure Group reopened old dozer and hand lines on the southern end of Happy Camp near Curly Jack and Elk Creek campgrounds. They also performed point protection work around structures along Elk Creek. The work in both areas will continue today.

Firefighters in the Patterson and Ti-Bar areas are removing excess firefighting equipment from areas where it is no longer needed. A masticator is finishing up a southern contingency line along Old Phone Road (14inside the 2017 Haypress Fire scar.

Infrared flights are providing information about the McCash Fire’s movement on the southeast side of the fire in the Marble Mountain Wilderness. The fire continues to back slowly into the Wooley Creek drainage.

Weather: Today’s high temperature is predicted to be in the mid-90s with low humidity. A cold front will move in to the area Tuesday, bringing a 25 percent chance of showers or thunderstorms. Southerly ridgetop winds are expected to increase. This could clear out the smoke layer that has helped reduce fire activity over the past week, setting the stage for increased fire behavior.

No Drone Zone: A temporary flight restriction (TFR) remains in place over the McCash Fire. Flying a hobbyist drone over a fire puts everyone at risk and hinders firefighting suppression efforts. If you fly, we must ground all aircraft due to the dangers unauthorized drones pose to firefighting aircraft. To find information about the TFR, visit https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_1_0033.html. Remember, a TFR also applies to unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones.

Smoke: Smoke from the McCash Fire and neighboring fires in northern California is impacting local communities. For air quality information go to https://fire.airnow.gov or https://bit.ly/SiskiyouWildfireSmoke.

Evacuations: For the most current and accurate evacuation information for Siskiyou County, please  visit the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/SiskiyouCountySheriff or the county evacuation map at https://bit.ly/SiskiyouEvacMap.

All residents are encouraged to sign up for CodeRED Emergency Alert at: https://bit.ly/CodeRedSiskiyou

Road Closures: Road information can be found by calling 1-800-427-7623 or on the Caltrans website https://roads.dot.ca.gov/

Visit the following sites for specific Forest Closure information:

U.S. Forest Service Region 5 https://bit.ly/R5ForestClosures

Six Rivers National Forest https://bit.ly/SRNFNotices

Klamath NationalForest https://bit.ly/KNFNotices 

For further information about the McCash Fire, please visit the following links: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7757/