The problem with the Soberanes Fire

The biggest problem of the Soberanes fire lasting 83 days was it burned into wilderness areas required by law to have no roads put into them including dirt roads put by bulldozers. So, in order to maintain this Wilderness area ONLY ground fire crews without engines installed by helicopters and helicopter tankers and jet tankers could be used at all. There may be other rules I don't know about as well.

So, because of all these rules that apply specifically to state and federal wilderness areas with no roads of any kind allowed this was a very difficult fire to fight. So the best way was to just contain it with backfires to keep more firefighters from dying or getting poison oak problems from direct contact or smoke. Smoke is the single most dangerous way to get poison oak by the way which sent many many firefighters to the hospital with lung and eye problems especially.