What's at stake:
The Garnet Fire grew another 13,000 acres on Sunday alone, due to dry vegetation catching on fire and allowing the fire to spread along the side of hills near Oak Flat.
On Sunday alone, the northwestern part of the Garnet Fire exploded, making the blaze grow another 13,000 acres in the Sierra National Forest. The fire is at 14% containment.
Yesterday, the wildfire’s northwestern end crossed Dinkey Creek and ended up in Oak Flat, burning through a hilly part of the forest with much more surface area than just flat land.
“The fire’s burning aggressively up the hills,” said Gino DeGraffenreid, an operations section chief, during a Sunday wildfire briefing. “It’s the reason why you’re seeing those giant columns of smoke.”
Three additional areas on the western side of the fire were changed to evacuation orders from evacuation warnings, according to the Fresno County Sheriffs’ Office on Sunday evening.
Cameras in the Sierra National Forest trained on the wildfire captured massive plumes of smoke Sunday. In the same wildfire briefing that day, DeGraffenreid acknowledged how communities in eastern Fresno County already know how bad wildfires can get, especially considering the 2020 Creek Fire.
“I want you to rest assured, our primary line is in place,” DeGraffenreid said. “We’ve ordered additional resources that are arriving in the next few hours, and we’ve shifted the resources that we already have. Those resources include fire engines, bulldozers, crews, very large air tankers.”
A forest camera stationed south of the Garnet Fire, pointed northwest, captured the fire’s rapid spread through a hilly area with lots of dry vegetation Sunday. 
A forest camera stationed south of the Garnet Fire, pointed northwest, captured the fire’s rapid spread through a hilly area with lots of dry vegetation Sunday. 
A forest camera stationed south of the Garnet Fire, pointed northwest, captured the fire’s rapid spread through a hilly area with lots of dry vegetation Sunday.
While the fire has pushed north, officials said the vast majority of it remains within strategically placed containment lines a few miles out. Fire behavior analyst Dan Patterson said during the same Sunday briefing that the fire expanded thanks to dry vegetation — also known as fuels — along creek beds in the area.
“The entire time we’ve been on this fire, it’s been very driven by fuels and topography,” Patterson said during the briefing. “So it isn’t completely unexpected that something like that would happen.”
He added that he expects the weather will not fan the Garnet Fire’s flames — at least for the time being.
“The forecast for the next five days is showing a fairly stable weather pattern, actually kind of cooler and wetter, which is favorable for the firefighters out there,” Patterson said.
The Garnet Fire was already the third largest wildfire in California so far this year — as of last week.
