The Gold Ranch Fire is at 8% containment, which sounds low to the public given many can no longer see smoke or flames.
Charles Moore, the Fire Chief for Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue says containment doesn't mean extinguishment.
Chief Moore says 100% containment means they're confident in the fire not jumping the containment perimeter line, meaning they're confident the fire won't jump the line and start other fires.
“It does mean we have control lines established around the entire perimeter of the fire and we usually work back within 100 feet from the edge of the fire, 100 feet inward to make sure that everything is cold,” he said.
Chief Moore says if containment is low on a fire and you can see smoke or signs of fire that could be due to the terrain they're working on or how big the fire is. The Gold Ranch Fire is 674 acres.
He says to achieve full containment over an entire fire perimeter takes a lot of people and a number of days to achieve.
“Every fire is different," he said. "Every wildland fire is different. The fuels are different. The terrain is different, and the fuels inside the containment lines are different.” he adds “It’s a function of terrain, time, the length of the perimeter of the fire, and the number of people you have to try to achieve that.”
Chief Moore says, for the public, when you hear that "forward progress has been stopped" that's when you should have a sigh of relief because it means the fire is no longer advancing and that they're starting to gain a good handle on the fire.
“Once we achieve forward progress stopped then we start working on containment and working on hot spots and making sure that fire doesn’t rekindle and jump the fire containment lines,” he said.
The fire is now being transferred to an incident management team, they do this to be able to release their mutual aid resources and the extra firefighters who have been helping.
