Two days after it started, the Boone Fire in the hills west of Coalinga surged into the No. 6 spot among California’s wildfires this season.
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Boone — which was reported around noon Tuesday, Sept. 3 — reached 16,948 acres (26½ square miles) by Thursday afternoon, with 5% containment, CalFire said.
Evacuations were ordered for a sparsely populated 112-square-mile area of the southern Diablo Range in Fresno County, and Highway 198 was closed between Highway 25 and Coalinga.
The map above shows the approximate perimeter as a black line and the evacuation area in red.
The sheriff’s office said about three dozen homes were in the fire’s path, most of them along Los Gatos Creek Road.
For updates on the evacuation, see the Fresno County emergency map or the sheriff’s Facebook page.
Though a finger of the fire reached Monterey County, no evacuations had been called there as of Thursday afternoon.
The season’s five bigger fires are all 95% to 100% contained. They are: Park (Butte/Tehama counties, 429,603 acres), Borel (Kern, 59,288), Lake (Santa Barbara, 38,664), SQF Lightning Complex (Kern/Tulare, 33,026), and Sites (Colusa, 19,195).
Boone overlaps with area burned in July 2020 by the Mineral Fire, 29,667 acres.