As Lake Fire containment rises, operations are decreasing, including reduction of resources and personnel

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - As the battle against the Lake Fire in Santa Barbara County reaches its 19th day, crews are starting to draw closer to full containment.

"Things are looking good," said Lake Fire Incident Commander Curtis Coots, with California Interagency Incident Management Team 2, which is currently heading up fire operations. "We're holding at 38,664 acres and currently 90% contained. The fire hasn't moved since California Interagency Incident Management Team 2 took over here on July 19th."

With crews getting a firm handle on the fire, resources and personnel are beginning to leave, with some returning home, while others being redirected to other fires in the region.

"A lot of these resources will be reassigned to nationally," said Coots. "There are a lot of big fires still up in Oregon, Washington that we've been filling resource orders to go up there, and the footprint of this camp will quickly diminish over the next couple days to accommodate the local (Los Padres National) Forest's needs."

Personnel fighting the Lake Fire has now dropped to below 1,000, a significant reduction from the high point when more than 3,000 firefighters from around the Western United States were battling the challenging fire.

A secondary base camp at the Santa Maria Speedway recently closed, and at the fire operations headquarters, the Incident Command Post at the Elks Event Center in Santa Maria, the massive property is much emptier and quieter than it was just a couple of days ago.

"What the plan is, is over the coming days, we'll be working with the next organization, which is a smaller organization," said Coots. "The goal is to get the, get the fire down to probably 150, maybe 200 personnel that will be left for the (Los Padres National) Forest to manage and maintain here on the Lake Fire. It'll pretty much come from the Los Padres National Forest Type 3 incident command team that they have locally. and so we'll be transitioning with them at the end of the week, and the (Los Padres National) Forest will pretty much take the fire over there from continuing with suppression, repair and patrolling to make sure there's no hotspots."

Even though fire containment has reached 90%, operations are continuing around the clock 24 hours a day with fire suppression the main focus during the ongoing battle.

"There is still a fire burning out there," said fire behavior analyst Dennis Burns. "Even when it's contained 100%, there's still going to be a fire out there."

Burns added favorable weather that has helped in the firefighting effort over the last several days is disappearing, with more challenging conditions returning, similar to the early days of the fire.

"For the next two days, it's going more to hot and dry," said Burns. "Then Friday, it'll cool a little bit, but we're supposed to have wind gusts up to 25 miles an hour for an extended period of time. Hot, dry, windy. Those are the three combinations that we don't like to see. On the favorable side, we'll be able to test those fire lines. we're pretty confident that they'll stay where they're at. But. And this gives us a test before our team disengages and a different organization moves in."

Overall, even with more difficult weather conditions in the forecast this week, with containment now at 90% and climbling, the end of the Lake Fire is now in sight.

"The collaboration between CAL FIRE, Santa Barbara County Fire Department and Santa Barbara County Sheriff's has been phenomenal," said Coots.  "The support has been just outrageous with making sure we've been able to keep the fire in the current footprint throughout this time over the last couple days, and it's really been great to know that if I don't have something with the team that I can reach out to my cooperator, and he can bring that tool to the table to help us with suppression, repair, or even suppression at this time."