Big Sur's Plaskett Fire Hits 83% Containment While Timber Fire Stalls at 27% After a Month, New Lucas Fire Erupts 200 Miles North

Three California wildfires have now burned a combined 59,214 acres, according to figures compiled by the Los Angeles Times as of Saturday afternoon, Sept. 12. Two of them, the Plaskett and Timber fires, are part of the same Big Sur crisis. The third, the Lucas fire, is not, and some coverage has blurred that distinction.

Plaskett Fire: Nearly Wrapped Up

The Plaskett fire started Aug. 26 near the small community of Plaskett in Monterey County, on land managed by the Los Padres National Forest. Cal Fire's incident tracker lists its cause as still under investigation.

The fire's early growth was violent. It sat at roughly 140 acres as of Aug. 27, according to Breitbart, then doubled overnight to more than 5,900 acres by Aug. 28, per the Guardian. By Aug. 30 it had reached 8,241 acres with just 1% containment, Breitbart reported, and by Aug. 31 it had nearly doubled again to 15,479 acres, still at 1% containment, according to KQED.

Containment then caught up fast. The Epoch Times reported that between roughly Sept. 3 and Sept. 8, containment jumped from 1% to 47% even as the fire's footprint grew only modestly past 29,000 acres. As of the latest Cal Fire update, posted at 5:50 p.m. on Sept. 12, the Plaskett fire sits at 29,942 acres and 83% containment. Evacuation orders for two zones near Highway 1 were downgraded to warnings on Friday, Sept. 11, and the southern highway closure has been pulled back to Los Burros Road at mile marker 11.1.

Timber Fire: A Month In, Still Only a Quarter Contained

The Timber fire, burning inland of Big Sur Village since Aug. 8, has moved far less dramatically but proven far harder to finish. It passed 25,000 acres around Sept. 1 at 22% containment, according to the Epoch Times, and by the Los Angeles Times' Saturday count sits at 25,426 acres and 27% containment.

The Epoch Times reported 661 structures, some described as high-end homes, remain threatened, and that three firefighters have been injured fighting the blaze. Some 1,600 personnel have been assigned to it. Cal Fire spokesperson Josh Silveira told KQED the fire has benefited from marine-layer moisture rolling in over Highway 1, but warned that warmer, drier weather midweek could push it back into active growth.

A Third Fire, Far Away

The Lucas fire is a separate matter entirely. It started Thursday morning, Sept. 10, near Bachelor Valley on the Lake-Mendocino county border, hundreds of miles north of the Big Sur coastline. Fueled by northwest winds, it reached 3,846 acres with 15% containment by Saturday, per Cal Fire figures cited by the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles Times' own headline described all three fires as burning "near Big Sur," which is accurate for the Plaskett and Timber fires but not for the Lucas fire, a wine-country blaze on the opposite side of the state. Lumping the acreage together produces the eye-catching "nearly 60,000 acres" figure, but two very different regional fire situations are being described as one event.

What This Has Cost So Far

In an Aug. 31 estimate provided to KQED, the U.S. Forest Service put the combined firefighting cost of the Plaskett and Timber fires at roughly $80 million, driven largely by heavy aircraft use in terrain with almost no vehicle access. Forest Service spokesperson Lee Beyer told KQED the fires could keep burning into October, when the region's first winter rains typically finish off the most remote pockets of flame. No updated cost figure has been published since that estimate, so the current total is likely higher.

The Business Toll, and a Question Still Open

The fires forced closures of Pfeiffer Big Sur and Andrew Molera state parks, along with the Big Sur River Inn and the cliffside restaurant Nepenthe, which said it was losing more than $70,000 a day while shut down, according to the Los Angeles Times. Both businesses have since reopened.

Monterey County Supervisor Kate Daniels pushed Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state emergency early in the Plaskett fire's run, telling reporters, per Breitbart, "I think, in my opinion, it qualifies as an emergency. I think an emergency should be declared." As of that report, dated around Aug. 30, Newsom had not responded. None of the available reporting confirms whether Newsom later issued a formal emergency declaration for either fire. Whether that declaration ever came, and what it would have changed on the ground given the fire's steep, roadless terrain, remains unresolved.

A separate, much smaller blaze, the Getty fire, burned 25 acres in Brentwood on Wednesday, Sept. 9, forcing evacuations and a brief closure of the Getty Center, which reopened Friday. It was 90% contained as of Saturday, according to the Los Angeles Times.