Cook Fire: Cal Fire Probing Yuba County Control Burn That Got Out Of Control
YUBA COUNTY (CBS13) — A fire that started as a controlled burn on Thursday turned out of control in high winds, forcing the evacuation of a handful of homes.
Cal Fire says it has information on how the fire got away from firefighters, but they're still in the process of assessing if the training exercise turned massive blaze should have been set in the first place.
The Cook Fire has scorched nearly 200 acres of dry wooded land in Yuba County, forcing a dozen residents from their homes as the flames crept closer.
Oregon House resident Carol Corlejo said she's frustrated learning she could have lost her home from a fire started by Cal Fire.
"Why would they possibly, when it's breezy and windy; why in the summer are there controlled burns?" she said.
Cal Fire spokeswoman Lynne Tolmachoff said the burn was meant to teach firefighters how to put out fires by burning fuel in its path.
"Unfortunately in the process of how to teach these guys how to stop a fire, we caused one to happen," she said.
But when an oak tree caught some flying embers, that's all it took for the fire to take off.
"For some reason they did have some winds kick in that were kind of unexpected so that is why the fire took off and they had to go to the contingency plan," she said.
More than 250 fire personnel were called in to help contain the Cook Fire, which was 75 percent contained as of Friday afternoon.
While people are allowed to return home, Tolmachoff says firefighters aren't done.
"In hindsight, we had known what was going to happen, we would have never even started the training burn," she said. "It definitely it would have never happened. But, like I said, there's going to be a review on this, and they're going to look at the process and how everything went down yesterday."
Neighbors also commended firefighters for keeping the flames from taking any homes after teh blaze got out of control.
