Photo from the official Station fire Facebook page
In a press conference that just concluded at about 5:20 p.m., Incident Commander Mike Dietrich, his staff, and the Forest Supervisor provided the following updated information about the Station fire near Los Angeles:
- Size and containment: The official size is still 140,150 acres, but this figure will be updated later this evening. The containment has increased from 22% to 28%.
- Number of firefighters: 4,700 firefighters are assigned.
- South side: they made “excellent progress” today securing the perimeter in the foothills and urban interface area.
- West side: “We are in a fire-fight now”, Incident Commander Dietrich said about this area. They have a lot of work left to do there, and the rugged terrain means that only hand crews can get in there to work.
- North side: again they made “excellent progress”.
- Mt. Wilson: they made “great progress” around the communications and observatory facilities. No structures have been lost, and the fire in the area is “low intensity”.
- Southeast side: this is the part of the fire that they are the most concerned about, and is the number one priority on the fire. They will attempt to keep the fire above the communities of Acadia, Pasadena, and Sierra Madre and to work the fire over toward the west fork of the San Gabriel river.
- East side: this area continues to grow. The Incident Commander said firefighters are “out in front, waiting for an opportunity to act in there”, referring to Highways 2 and 39.
- Air Attack: Heavy smoke prevented fixed wing aircraft from working the fire at all, but helicopters were able to be very effective today.
- Structures: 64 residences and 49 outbuildings have burned.
- Evacuations: From a maximum of 4,300 homes that were under evacuation orders, only 50 remain, and those are in the Acton area.
- Cost to date: $27 million
- Cause and Origin of the fire: Officially, said the Forest Supervisor of the Angeles National Forest, they have “no idea” what the cause of the fire was. But news reports and video footage showed investigators zeroing in on a possible point of origin.
