Normalcy returning as Bullards Bar blaze fades

Normalcy has begun to return to the eastern Yuba County towns menaced by the Bullards Fire, as residents come back to houses they evacuated and firefighters have containment of the blaze in sight.

The wildfire below Bullards Bar Dam was 80 percent contained by Monday night, and state and federal fire officials expected to fully box in the flames by today.

Temperatures in the Dobbins area were expected to head north of 80 degrees today, but a weekend marked by cooler and moister conditions already has helped check the fire's spread.

"The biggest factor helping us was Mother Nature," Jeff Brand, a Cal Fire battalion chief, told area residents Monday during a meeting at the Dobbins Oregon House Fire District station.

A cause for the wildfire, the area's second major blaze in as many years, remained elusive. The fire began Friday afternoon, halfway down a canyon on the east side of the North Yuba River on steep and densely wooded ground far from any normal human activity, according to Brand.

Most roads in the area are now open, according to spokeswoman Ann Westling of the Tahoe National Forest, including Marysville Road and Moonshine Road. Oregon Hill Road is also open but with cautions as fire vehicles and equipment may be on the roadway. County Road 169 remained closed. Bullards Bar recreation areas and campgrounds are open. With Cal Fire, U.S. Forest Service and local fire crews having largely hemmed in the blaze, the remaining efforts mainly involve attacking the remaining hot spots within 200 feet of the fire's boundaries to prevent its revival, Brand said. A firefighting force that numbered more than 1,300 people at the Bullards Fire's peak will be reduced to about 600 today and gradually scaled down, but some crews are expected to remain for another week.

Crews have been working to repair power poles and equipment damaged in the fire. Swanson said firefighters also asked that energy be turned off for 850 customers Saturday morning during the fire's peak. All but 10 of those customers had their power restored Saturday evening.

Of the 60 PG&E customers in the fire area who lost power on Friday — 40 in Dobbins and 20 in Camptonville — 55 had service restored at 7 p.m. Monday and the last five are to be reconnected by tonight, according to PG&E spokesman Brian Swanson.

Residents of 40 homes close to the fire site below Bullards Bar Dam also were allowed to return after the Yuba County Sheriff's Department lifted evacuation orders on several foothill roads.

"There were lots of questions on how to evacuate properly. You look at the stuff in your house and say, 'well, a lot of it's not that important,'" said Lotz, who took with her a laptop computer, hard drive and her fire insurance policy before returning to her home east of Bullards Bar on Sunday morning.

No buildings have been lost to the Bullards Fire, but the foothills' record of conflagrations — including the nearby Yuba Fire that scorched 3,900 acres in August 2009 — left some people still wary.

"I've had my house be the only thing left, had (property) burned all the way around it," said Henry Davis, a Dobbins resident for 37 years. "It's trauma. Forest fires equal trauma, like earthquakes and volcanoes."

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