Hazardous tree removal underway in Park Fire footprint as fire produces large smoke plume

CHICO – Crews are still at work to contain California's fourth largest wildfire in history, the Park Fire , which has threatened four counties over two weeks and burned more than 406,000 acres.

On Monday night, the fire's smoke plume kicked up into the sky forcing more evacuations in eastern Tehama County . But on the ground, Cal Fire crews worked to remove hazardous trees in areas devastated by the fire.

The process of removing hazardous trees and branches is necessary in order to bring people back to their homes and properties, safely, according to a spokesperson for the Park Fire, Chris Vestal.

"One of our priorities is always to make sure that we can get people home as soon as possible after a fire, and unfortunately we have had significant loss in this fire over 550 homes, but that still doesn't mean that we don't want to let those people back in their community," said Vestal.

If it seems like the hazardous tree removal work is happening more quickly on the Park Fire than other major wildfires in California, Vestal explained, it's because of how the fire burned.

"It has been over a week now that people have been out of their homes since this fire began, and one of the ways that we do that is to make sure that all the services are restored. We work collaboratively with PG&E, the telecommunications companies as well as a lot of other vendors, to remove those hazard trees so that people can do so safely," said Vestal.

The Park Fire moved beyond communities, like Cohasset and Forest Ranch at the start of the fire. The head of the fire is now further away and it allowed crews to start work on tree removal while the fire burned in other areas.

The fire made a push up the Mill Creek drainage on Monday, causing an evacuation order to be issued in eastern Tehama County to the Plumas County line. Crews said wind, terrain and dense dry fuels combined in the fire's push Monday.

The fire has destroyed 640 structures and damaged 52 others.