Fire Captain Eric Carreiro from CAL FIRE spoke with KSBY News Wednesday afternoon to help clarify the different fire terms being used by fire officials.
“A controlled burn would be where we have a plan to light a fire for some reason,” Carreiro explained. “That's typically going to be in the sense of vegetation management projects, and so we have found an area that would be beneficial for us to remove those fuels prior to an uncontrolled fire starting.”
While controlled burns give firefighters a better chance of stopping a future wildfire early, Carreiro explained that containment is a percentage of the fire that is surrounded by controlled lines.
“When we're talking about control lines, it is a line in the sand or in the dirt where we've removed all the vegetation," Carreiro said. “Whether that be by hand crews, bulldozers, all those different tools that we have, we've taken it all the way down to bare dirt and we've made a line that we will then go patrol and make sure that the fire can't continue to burn through."
Captain Carreiro also explained the difference between an evacuation warning and an order.
“When we're giving an evacuation warning, that's gonna be our lowest level. That's going to be letting people kind of get ready. Start to execute your plan for whatever your family is to, to start packing up the car and get things ready," he said. “When we go into an evacuation order, we are saying that the public needs to get out of their homes. They need to get to a safe place."
Lastly, Carreiro says that when firefighters use the term "forward progress stopped," that means the fire is no longer growing.
