Soberanes Fire now costliest to battle at $195.5 million
After holding steady at 60 percent for weeks, on Wednesday, Soberanes Fire officials announced a small slip – the 107,375 acre fire is now 52 percent contained.
"There's fire that's growing in some of those uncontrolled remote areas of the fire and that's why the containment percentage is going down,” fire official Elayn Briggs said. “But as we get more containment, of course, the percentage will go back up and we're expecting that to happen very soon."
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This, as a California Interagency Incident Management Team said it has cost nearly $196 million to fight the fire. A public information officer told KION it was the costliest in history, with every day costs ranging from $2 million to $8 million. Most of the expense comes from air operations, then camp support.
"In this fire, a lot of it has been from the air,” Briggs said. “It's very remote, it's very steep, and it’s inaccessible to the ground forces, your hot spots, and your crews. Now we do have crews on the ground, on these lines, doing the burning, but for the most part, this fire has been an air show"