And tracking the wildfire fight.
Right now, the fast moving oak fire
burning tonight in Mariposa County.
At this point the fires burned more
than 15,000 acres with no containment.
The cause is under investigation,
and Governor Gavin Newsom has declared
a state of emergency in Mariposa County.
ABC 10s. John Bartel has been on the
ground all day in Mariposa County and
brings us the latest on the fire and
its impact on local county communities.
York Fire has burned more than 1500.
Tigers and it's making its
way closer to Yosemite,
but in its path are two communities
in a rural and steep area,
and it's difficult for fire crews
to get to just above the evacuation
center at Mariposa Elementary School.
Smoke from the oak fire is growing.
And just over the hill,
flames are tearing through a dry forest.
On the ground, fire crews are working to
stop the fire from spreading to homes.
From the sky,
pilots are dropping water and fire
retardant to keep the fire from
moving east to Yosemite National Park
and West to the town of Mariposa.
Alright, so this is some of the
struggles that a lot of these fire
crews are working with right now.
It's very hard to see,
but there is actually a line of
fire crews right on the other
side of this smoke right here.
All they can do right now is wait
until this fire passes 12 miles east
of Mariposa is lush Meadow estates,
a community that was told to evacuate.
This is our home.
We just feel like I feel
like we're gonna. Do what we can
to to at least. Have a chance Jerry
Kell stayed behind to rake away dry
leaves from his home as he watches
a helicopter fly over his community.
He's reminded of the Ferguson fire
that nearly destroyed his neighborhood
in 2018. That wasn't the scary as this one.
Fire crews attempt to maneuver
trucks up steep hills.
The oak fire burned dozens of homes,
including Highland House bed and breakfast,
a popular Yosemite Valley getaway
for 22 years. Hello, I'm very sorry,
I'm I'm so sorry to tell you it was lost.
And back at Mariposa Elementary.
More bad news.
Rodney McGuire learned that his
home was lost as well. Luckily,
he was able to save a few family keepsakes.
I had just enough time.
To get birth certificates.
My DD214, the picture of my parents tonight.
Fire crews are expecting further
advancement of the fire and because
of that the Red Cross is preparing
for more evacuees to come into their
shelters in Mariposa I'm John Bartel.
Thank you that was John Bartel reporting.
Now check this out.
The smoke from the oak fires making
its way to the Sierra our own
Becca Habegger took this video this
morning along I-80 near the Kingvale
exit and now on to meteorologist
Carly Gomez tracking their current
conditions for us tonight. Carla
yeah, we've been seeing a lot of
smoke throughout the day as the fire
continues to burn and burn quickly.
It's running a lot of fuels as well and
those fuels the grasses, the brushes,
they're going straight up into the
air and concentrating right now too.
Areas right in the High Sierra
spots you can see a lot of that
there very unhealthy air quality,
a closer of course to Yosemite,
but it has been moving its way
all the way up to Truckee,
South Lake Tahoe and the surrounding areas
in that red zone for unhealthy air quality.
Pretty much for everyone.
Once you get into the orange zone,
it's unhealthy for sensitive groups,
so everyone seeing at least
smelling the smoke in the air.
So you want to limit your time outdoors.
We do expect a lot of that smoke
to begin pushing down into a lot
of those lower Foothill spots,
and even some lighter air quality.
Issues for some valley portions as well
as we've started moving into 4:00 AM,
you can actually see how thick some
of that smoke could be and how bad
the air quality could be for areas
around Arnold Murphy's Sonora all the
way up to Jackson you could really
see a fine define nice defined line
here moving up toward the Northeast.
In fact,
National Weather Service in Boise
actually warning their residents that hey,
we could start getting a lot of this
smoke moving up there in the next
two days and this is also going to
travel all the way up potentially
into the areas of the Pacific
Northwest by Tuesday into Wednesday
and we have been tracking.
Then into tomorrow we will start to
see it receive just a little bit
before pushing right back out toward
the east into the afternoon hours,
and then we're really tracking
potential for thunderstorms after that,
because once we start getting those,
we'll start to also see some winds
picking up and hopefully pushing a
little bit more of that out of the area.
Winds 5 to 10 mph as we start
moving into early morning hours.
Very light winds,
especially around the Fire Zone,
so that's good news for firefighters.
We will see it picking up into
the evening though,
so bad news there Monday evening
as we start to get low pressure
offshore pushing those winds.
Onshore and increasing those winds as well.
Let's talk about what we've been seeing
in terms of recovering humidities.
We're now about 20 to 40%
relative humidity for these zones,
so decent at least we're not
seeing 20% in these areas,
but it is still very dry and all
that brush is really dried out
in the overnight hours.
We are expecting to see some of the
clouds rolling and this will affect
areas into the High Sierra spots.
Tracking those fires.
We'll talk more about that coming up.