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POLLOCK PINES-

The King Fire was 84 percent contained Saturday night with over 5,800 fire personnel still working the incident.

“There’s still a lot of people out here, still a lot of work to be done,” said Fire Information Officer Sam Harrel.

Three days of rain made significant strides for the two week wildfire, but it also slowed free crews down.

“As good as it is, it’s also been problem. It’s caused a lot of mud, and made the roads slick, made it difficult for crews to get around. Difficult on the roads, difficult on the hillsides, we’ve had to kid of back off some places where they’re working just because of the mud issues. i mean the rain’s really not gonna put it out. It’s so dry here, the fuels are so heavy that its gonna hold fire,” Harrel said.

High humidity did continue to keep fire activity down, but within the 97,099 acre burn, much of the forest is still smoldering.

“Just to rehab our suppression efforts is gonna take time,” Harrel said.

Harrel said fire crews could easily be on scene for several more weeks. The prospect is costly. At the height of the King Fire, suppression efforts cost $5 million dollars per day.

“A lot of our expense is in the air attack. And that won’t be an expense as we get into rehab,” Harrel said.

Harrel said rehabbing the EL Dorado National Forest will take more time, but require fewer crews. Over 2,000 fire personnel have already been demobilized. Many evacuation orders have been lifted, and several Red Cross relief centers have been closed.

“We’ll still have smoldering and smoke for quite a while as fire natural kind of cleans up after itself,” Harrel said.