The Shelly Fire, which started last week, has become the latest California wildfire to exceed 10,000 acres.
As of Friday, July 12, the Siskiyou County fire had burned 10,225 acres (16 square miles) and was 1% contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
It started July 3 near Shelly Lake, in the Klamath National Forest; the cause is under investigation.
The mandatory evacuation area covers almost 200 square miles. The U.S. Forest Service’s fire managers said on Friday that the evacuation orders and warnings affected 4,200 people and that more than 3,800 homes and 300 commercial structures are threatened.
The largest community that had been evacuated was Greenview, in the Scott Valley 15 miles west of Interstate 5. On Thursday, the order was reduced to a warning for most of Greenview’s residents.
A community meeting about the fire is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, July 12, at the high school in Etna. It can be attended virtually on the Facebook page of Klamath National Forest or CalFire’s Siskiyou unit.
The map above shows the approximate fire perimeter as a black line and the evacuation zone in red. For updates and details including warning zone boundaries, see the emergency map of Genasys Protect (formerly Zonehaven).
So far this season, seven California wildfires have exceeded 10,000 acres. The largest is Lake, which started on July 5 in Santa Barbara County; on Friday, July 12, it had burned 36,707 acres with 16% containment.
Last year at this time, California had had no wildfires over 1,600 acres. The 2023 season ended with a below-average 324,917 acres burned. About 75% of that was from three fires that started in August: Smith River Complex (95,107 acres) and SRF Lightning Complex (50,198), in the state’s northwest corner; and York (93,078), in San Bernardino County.
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