Lowell Fire burns 1,500 acres in Placer, Nevada counties

The Sacramento Bee ^ | July 25th, 2015 | By Edward Ortiz and Stela Khury

[Mariner]

A fire both Placer and Nevada Counties has burned 1,500 acres and forced the evacuation of roughly 50 homes, fire officials said.

“We have no containment,” said Lynne Tolmachoff, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The fire is burning to the northeast near the intersection of Lowell Hill Road and Chicago Park Powerhouse Road, in Alta. Both of those roads are closed to traffic, Tolmachoff said.

The fire is two miles from a subdivision.

“It’s moving at a pretty good pace,” Tolmachoff said.

Evacuation are expected for a 50 home area, although the fire is now burning in a sparsely populated terrain, according to Cal-Fire.

The fire started at 2:37 p.m. Over 200 firefighters are fighting the fire and air tanker support is being brought in to control the fire, she said. Tolmachoff said the cause of the fire is under investigation.

[BlueNgold]

http://m.kcra.com/news/crews-battle-100acre-fire-in-rural-placer-county/34355950

Local NBC news story.

If what they say is true, and this beast could jump the Bear River, things will go from bad to worse in a hurry. You never want to lose a potential line of containment.

[BlueNgold]

Great site but they only track incidents of federal jurisdiction.

Right now this is a CalFire incident.
Incident page is linked above.

[Mariner]

"could jump the Bear River"

Really, really bad place for a fire.

[Sivad]

Since the fire is NE of me and the airport
is north and slightly west of me I am not
in the flight path. However, one of our
local airtankers flew southeast over my
house about an hour before dark. A little
later a second airtanker flew the same path but suddenly
turned north as if it had been diverted back to
the Lowell fire. They must have needed a tanker
somewhere in Placer County.

[IYAS9YAS]

Great site but they only track incidents of federal jurisdiction.

Not only. They'll track any incident the feds get involved with. They have reciprocity agreements with the states. I guarantee CalFire will work with the feds if it gets any bigger. It's just what they do. Especially this close to national forest land.

[BlueNgold]

I’m talking about what shows up on inciweb.

Unless and until USDF joins the fight through unified command, that site won’t track the incident.

Yes they work extremely closely together. But inciweb won’t track a fire that is a state incident.

If you want a perfect example... the willow fire, current incident, has both CDF and USDF resources. Calfire is tracking on their page with a link to inciweb. However, over on inciweb, no mention of Lowell or Wragg, which are larger incidents. Why? No fed command.