913 firefighters are still on California’s Timber Fire, with seven zones evacuated

Seven weeks after it ignited in the Los Padres National Forest, California’s Timber Fire still has 913 firefighters and other personnel assigned to it, and seven evacuation zones in Monterey County remain under orders to leave. The fire has burned 25,350 acres, and CAL FIRE’s last update on September 28 put it at 88 percent contained.

Containment at that level usually means a crew’s work is shifting from stopping the fire to repairing its damage, and CAL FIRE’s own wording for the current phase points that way. Here the two jobs are still running side by side, and the incident’s command changed hands on September 29.

Who is still on the line, and who is running it

The National Interagency Fire Center’s situation report for the morning of September 29 lists 913 personnel on the Timber Fire, which it places four miles southeast of Big Sur in grass, timber and chaparral. That count covers everyone assigned to the incident rather than only crews on the fire line. The same report counts 5,400 people on all large fires nationally and sets the national preparedness level at 2, the second-lowest of five, so the Timber Fire holds the largest staffing of the three California fires the report lists, ahead of the Dome Fire in Yosemite National Park at 796 personnel and 5,259 acres.

It is a smaller commitment than it was. In late August, ABC7 reported more than 1,200 firefighters assigned when the blaze was deep in the Ventana Wilderness and only 25 percent contained. CAL FIRE says the incident is under unified command of the Los Padres National Forest and the Monterey County Sheriff’s Department, and that management was scheduled to pass to Nevada Team 2 on September 29.

The seven zones under evacuation orders

The CAL FIRE incident page, last updated September 28 at 1:03 p.m., lists active evacuation orders for zones MRY-D082, MRY-D090, MRY-F015-B, MRY-F015-C, MRY-F023-B, MRY-F028-C and MRY-F029. Ten more zones are under evacuation warnings. In Monterey County’s system an order means leave immediately, while a warning means prepare to go, as KAZU explains in its running coverage of the Big Sur fires.

Orders have been coming down gradually. On September 14 KAZU reported multiple orders downgraded to warnings, Highway 1 fully reopened through Big Sur and the fire at 27 percent contained. Ten days later, Local News Matters put containment at 59 percent and said some orders had been downgraded or lifted.

The page still lists 661 structures as threatened, a figure that has not fallen to zero even at 88 percent containment, and it reports three responder injuries. The cause remains under investigation, according to CAL FIRE. The threatened count was about 530 in ABC7’s August 24 report, so the list of structures near the perimeter has grown even as containment climbed, according to the two accounts. Residents can check alerts for their zone at alertmry.org, the county’s emergency notification site, which KAZU lists among its resources.

What 88 percent contained leaves undone

The agency’s description of current work is modest: “suppression repair making good progress along the southern perimeter and Coast Ridge Road,” with crews continuing patrol and addressing remaining heat signatures in remote terrain. Suppression repair means undoing what firefighting itself did, including bulldozer lines and hand lines cut through steep chaparral, to reduce the erosion that follows on bare ground.

The fire started on August 8 at 8:35 p.m. southeast of Loma Vista on a trail within the national forest, and KAZU says it prompted hundreds of evacuations at the outset. By August 21, Lookout Santa Cruz reported, two evacuation orders and nine warning zones were in place, four state parks were closed, and Highway 1 was shut between mile markers 37 and 42.6. Mutual aid reached the fire from far afield: the Central Fire District of Santa Cruz County sent a battalion chief, a fire captain and three firefighters, and Lookout counted the closed parks as Point Sur State Historic Park, Andrew Molera State Park, Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park and Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Its neighbor, the Plaskett Fire, started on August 26 south of it; the national report lists Plaskett at 29,993 acres, 99 percent contained, with 341 personnel still assigned.

The region has been fighting on two fronts since late August, with Monterey County’s Big Sur coast under threat from both blazes at once and combined burned acreage above 55,000 as of KAZU’s September 14 tally. The remaining question is how long the seven orders stand. CAL FIRE’s page gives no date for lifting them, and the agency has not said whether the new team’s first priority is releasing zones or finishing the perimeter, so the number to watch is the 913 on the national report and how quickly it falls.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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