OAKHURST – An Arcata woman driving southbound on Highway 41 this morning apparently fell asleep at the wheel and crashed her car just north of Cedar Valley Road. The 21-year-old was headed south at about 9 a.m. on Friday, Aug, 9, when she dozed off and ran up the steep embankment, shattering the back window and dumping dirt into the ...

HUNTINGTON LAKE – The Aspen fire is now estimated at 22,090 acres, and the date for complete containment has been pushed out to Saturday, Aug. 24. The fire is 80% contained, and personnel have been reduced to 976 as crews are demobilized, and firefighters and equipment are being made available to new fires as needed.

CALIFORNIA – The State Board of Equalization has begun mailing bills for the 2012-2013 fire prevention fee, due and payable by property owners in State Responsibity Areas (SRA). The amount of the fee has not changed since last year, at $150 per habitable structure, with a $35 credit per habitable structure for parcels located within the jurisdiction of a local ...

EASTERN MADERA COUNTY – Mammoth Pool/Minarets Road (Forest Road 4S81) was reopened on Wednesday, Aug. 7, at 6 p.m., along with all the campgrounds throughout the area (see list below). The Aspen Fire is now 80% contained, and has consumed 21,931 acres. No structures have been lost, and there have been only three injuries.

HUNTINGTON LAKE – Crews on the Aspen Fire continued mopping up 100 to 200 feet along the perimeter today, and worked on repairing, restoring and rehabilitating the firelines within the fire’s perimeter where it was safe to do so. Suppression repair will continue tonight on the northern side of the fire, along with firing operations along the San Joaquin River.

HUNTINGTON LAKE – The Aspen Fire has now consumed 20,797 acres and is 75% contained. The cost to fight the fire to date is reported at $23.4 million. Today on the Aspen Fire, crews continued to make good progress with indirect and direct attack fire line construction.

HUNTINGTON LAKE – Why didn’t they put this thing out right away? Why was it so many days with 0% containment? Are they really trying to get this fire handled, or just letting it burn on purpose? Those are some of the questions people have been bandying about, and when I visited the Aspen Fire Camp last Friday, I was ...

HUNTINGTON LAKE – When I rolled into the Aspen Fire Incident Command Post, which has sprung up at the China Peak Mountain Resort, it was 6 a.m., Sunday morning. Skies were clear and blue, and the temperature was perfect, just south of 50 degrees. I had worried that arriving so early would mean a smoky inversion, but that wasn’t the ...

Written & Photographed by Don Grove – We arrived at the Berkeley Marina on Saturday morning looking forward to spending time with old friends and learning about kites. These are not the ordinary paper kites you used to buy at the local variety store. These highly efficient kites can soar, dive, stop abruptly in mid-air, and then make a 90 ...

HUNTINGTON LAKE – So what do you do when you have over 2,000 people, all working on a dangerous, complex and widely dispersed project, and you need centralized organization and coordination? You build a city, of course. The Incident Command Post (ICP) for the Aspen Fire is exactly that, a tiny city spread across what is generally the parking lot ...