A wildfire near Yosemite National Park continues to grow and now is a risk to San Francisco’s water and power supplies. The Rim Fire is now the 14th largest fire since California began keeping records on wildfires in 1932 and the second largest in Tuolumne County.
The largest wildfire in California’s history was the 273,246-acre Cedar Fire in October 2003, which killed 15 people. The largest in Tuolumne County was the Stanislaus Complex Fire in August 1987, which burned 145,980 acres and killed one person.
“We’ve had success to the west,” said Jerry Snyder, a spokesman for the federal Forest Service, “but the north is still expanding.”
More important: “You can look for the size to change upward,” said Mr. Snyder of the Forest Service.
According to the New York Times:
Many eyes were on the status of public utilities in the Bay Area, about 140 miles west of Yosemite. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission said on Sunday that the fire had not affected the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which supplies water to 2.6 million customers. That reservoir accounts for 85 percent of San Francisco’s water supply, but the commission emphasized in a statement that it also had “a large supply” of water stored in local reservoirs.