[Update: Tue., July 8, 2025, 5:45pm] Highway 166 is reopening to traffic at 6 p.m. on Tuesday after being closed nearly a week due to the Madre Fire, which is now at 80,610 acres and 55 percent contained. The sole evacuation warning for Santa Barbara County has been lifted, as have several warnings for San Luis Obispo County, which also saw some evacuation orders downgraded to warnings. See San Luis Obispo County Evacuation Map for the latest information.
[Update: Tue., July 8, 2025, 11:20am] As of Tuesday morning, the Madre Fire is listed at 80,603 acres and 35 percent contained. The Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District has canceled its Air Quality Watch and Alert “due to increased containment of the Madre Fire and our air quality forecasts showing continued improved air quality.” A total of 1,573 personnel remain assigned to the fire.
[Update: Mon., July 7, 2025, 3pm] The Madre Fire may be the biggest fire in the state right now, having burned more than 80,000 acres of Cuyama Valley grasslands, but it’s showing signs of slowing down. Evacuation warnings issued because of the fire — which started the afternoon of July 2 — were lifted in Kern County, but one for Santa Barbara County remains in effect, as do evacuation orders and warnings for parts of San Luis Obispo County.
“We’re turning the corner here,” stated Andrew Madsen, spokesperson for the Los Padres National Forest since taking the post with the outbreak of the Jesusita Fire in 2009 that claimed 80 homes and gobbled up 8,733 acres.
Although official statistics say the Madre Fire is 30 percent contained, Madsen said the amount of “black line” firefighting crews have gotten around the blaze would suggest the actual containment number is higher than that. The northwestern corner of the fire — on U.S. Forest Service land — seemed dead, Madsen said. The eastern section of the fire — on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property — was where it remained most frisky.
When the fire started, Madsen noted, it was pretty much the only fire then going off in the state. Since then, he said, a number of smaller fires have broken out in Northern California due to lightning strikes.
The advantage of having been the first big one, he said, was that the Madre Fire has been able to secure pretty much all the resources it’s asked for. At one point — Friday and Saturday — there were two DC-10 air tankers attacking the fire with retardant with six additional planes in the fray.
Today, no planes are being deployed. Instead, bulldozers and line crew — nearly 1,500 strong — have been attacking and containing the fire.
The vast majority of the land engulfed has involved mid-thigh-high grasses that offer highly combustible fuels in 90-degree heat with 20-mile-per-hour winds with sporadic gusts stronger than that.
When asked for metrics showing how dry the soil and brush are, Madsen replied, “It’s drier than a popcorn fart.”
Later in the week, the temperatures are expected to exceed 100 degrees.
Thus far, most of the acreage involved is sparsely populated property owned by either the Los Padres National Forest or BLM. Very little of the land is privately owned. To date, only one barn has been destroyed and one firefighter injured and only mildly so.
For Kimberly Winter, just three days into her stint as new director of the Los Padres when the fire broke out, the Madre Fire has been her baptism by fire. For Winter, the Madre Fire is her first leadership experience in a fire leadership capacity. Before, she worked in Washington, D.C., as the head of conservation education for the U.S. Forest Service, a function and mission with few friends in the administration of President Donald Trump and even less funding.
Recent media reports have made much of the fact that 40 percent of the National Guard usually assigned to firefighting functions are not available, having been deployed in Los Angles to back up ICE agents and city police during recent protests and some limited rioting.
When asked what impact this has had, Madsen said that typically National Guard support isn’t called upon until later in the fire season. Typically, he added, they are assigned to base camp for logistical support and are not adequately trained to do direct battle with the flames. Thus far, Madsen said, commanders of the Madre Fire have gotten all the resources they’ve asked for.
“I don’t recall us putting in any request for the National Guard,” he stated.
Although the cause of the fire remains officially “under investigation,” Madsen revealed that time-lapse aerial photographs indicate the germination of an airborne puff of white smoke after a strand of five cars drove by a stretch of road where the fire started.
“It could have been a cigarette or cigar,” he suggested, “or some automotive malfunction that threw off a spark.”
[Original Story] The Cuyama Valley fire that quickly started five days ago at 8,000 acres has now increased by more than tenfold, its size as of Monday morning estimated at 80,480 acres. According to the last update issued by the Los Padres National Forest, the fire — California’s largest so far this year — is 30 percent contained.
At last count, the fire — dubbed the Madre Fire — had 1,472 crew involved in efforts to contain it. According to the most recent communication, firefighters are strengthening containment lines throughout the northwest and northern perimeters, engaged in what’s described as “mopping up.” To the southwest and north, bulldozer operations are reinforcing the containment lines.
“Progress remains steady,” according to an update issued about 9:30 Monday morning. The terrain to the Southwest is described as “challenging” and crews are putting in handlines in areas inaccessible to dozers. Most of the fire has involved tall grasses and chapparal. Dozers and work crews are trying to keep the fire hemmed in on the southern flank to keep the Madre Fire from spreading to Highway 166, which remains very much off limits to traffic from Highway 101 and will remain so indefinitely.
Firefighters are expecting temperatures in the 80s and 90s today, with winds generally at 10 to 15 miles per hour and gusts up to 30 miles. By midweek, however, the temperatures are expected to jump to the hundreds and relative humidities, already low, dropping even further.
In Santa Barbara County, an evacuation warning remains in effect for the area east of Rock Front Area, west of Cottonwood Canyon Road, and south of Highway 166. Portions of southern San Luis Obispo remain under evacuation warnings and orders. the evacuation warnings for Kern County were lifted Monday morning.
The Carrizo Plains National Monument (written about so movingly by Chuck Graham in last week’s Independent) is off limits and closed to the public.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
For the latest on the Madre Fire, see InciniWeb’s incident page. For the latest evacuation maps, see below:
San Luis Obispo County Evacuation Map
Santa Barbara County Evacuation Information & Map
