The Cooley Fire, which began Friday as a prescribed burn on a private ranch west of Cloverdale, grew to about 1.8 square miles, or 1,156 acres, Sunday and was 15% contained, Cal Fire said.
That’s about 425 acres more than Sunday morning, when Cal Fire still listed the fire at 731 acres. The agency mapped it at 1,036 acres shortly after noon and at 1,156 acres before 5 p.m.
In an update at 6:42 p.m. Sunday, Cal Fire said crews spent the day on the fire’s eastern and southern edges, building containment lines and “working to keep the flames west of Dry Creek and Highway 128.” Highway 128 runs between Cloverdale and Anderson Valley.
Where it’s burning
The fire is in southern Mendocino County, near Elkhorn Road and Cooley Ranch Road, and Cal Fire’s Mendocino Unit is in charge. As of early Monday, the statewide evacuation map that Cal Fire links from its incident page showed no evacuation orders or warnings near the fire.
Sunday on the fire line
Overnight Saturday, firefighters set fire to unburned vegetation in the fire’s northeast corner to starve it of fuel, Cal Fire said. Crews do that work at night, when cooler air and higher humidity make the flames less intense.
Sunday morning, heavy smoke was trapped under a temperature inversion at about 1,000 feet, leaving only the ridgelines visible. Pilots had to wait for it to lift before they could fly. A west wind picked up through the afternoon.
Cal Fire listed 790 people on the fire as of Sunday night, with 47 engines, 35 crews, 10 bulldozers, six water tenders and two helicopters. Air tankers from around the state were flying as conditions allowed, the agency said. Steep, rugged terrain has made parts of the fire hard to reach.
Smoke and weather
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District kept an air quality advisory posted Monday morning for smoke from the Cooley Fire. The district asks people in smoky areas to stay indoors with windows and doors closed if temperatures allow, and to check conditions at fire.airnow.gov.
The National Weather Service forecast for the fire area called for patchy smoke Monday afternoon, a high near 63 and a northwest wind around 13 mph, with gusts to 20 mph. There’s a 40% chance of rain after 11 p.m. Tuesday and again Wednesday, with less than one-tenth of an inch expected.
Temperatures will drop over the next several days, but fuels will stay critically dry, Cal Fire said.
The burn
The fire began on Cooley Ranch, private land where the Mendocino County Air Quality Management District had authorized two prescribed burns: up to 850 acres in Unit 8 on Friday and up to 500 acres in Unit 5 on Saturday. The burn wasn’t run by Cal Fire. The agency took over around 5 p.m. Friday, after flames crossed a road at the top of a ridge and escaped the burn’s boundaries, The Press Democrat reported.
Cal Fire lists the cause as under investigation. The agency is looking into why the burn escaped, including the weather and the firefighting resources on hand when it was lit, the paper reported.
The Unit 5 burn was listed as approved on the state’s prescribed fire tracker Saturday morning, then was gone from the tracker that afternoon. The tracker doesn’t say whether it was lit.