Well, the Beaver Creek fire is now 90% contained, the number of firefighters on the job in the Wood River Valley has been cut from 1,700 to 700, the fire has been downgraded to a Type 2 priority, and somehow, the town of Ketchum itself looks practically untouched (thanks, Castle Rock fire scar!). Firefighters still in town are being treated like celebrities, and with wilderness closures lifted, residents have been able to start walking around and surveying the damage. As the photos from locals like Nate Galpin and officials from the Ketchum Ranger District and Incident Command Center show, fire crews were able to do an incredible job protecting individual structures, with the valleys above burned through of all their vegetation.
But while Sun Valley looks sunny and blue after suffering the inevitable wrath of nature in the dry West, folks in Lake Tahoe are being bombarded with smoke not from the American fire thirty miles away, but by the huge Rim fire burning near Yosemite, which has consumed 134,000 acres and was 7% contained as of last night. The city of San Francisco is under a state of emergency after the fire forced the closure of two of three hydropower plants at the Hetchy Hetchy reservoir, and 2,500 firefighters are currently fighting the blaze there.
· Rim fire: Thousands of homes threatened as blaze rages on [LA Times]