STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Firefighters are working to contain the Park Fire in northern California, which is now the biggest active wildfire in the nation. The incident base camp in Chico is now a small city, populated by firefighters from throughout California and beyond. KQED's Katherine Monahan takes us there.
RICK CARHART: We have laundry facilities. We have feeding.
KATHERINE MONAHAN, BYLINE: Rick Carhart, spokesperson for Cal Fire, gestures around the base camp, which normally is an empty fairground. Now it's full of tents and trailers with places to sleep, shower, repair chainsaws.
(SOUNDBITE OF SCRAPING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You can kind of take the burrs off.
MONAHAN: Over in the parking lot, crews are loading and unloading dozens of engines. Garrett Griggs is with Scotts Valley Fire District.
GARRETT GRIGGS: I think we got resources all up and down the state. I think Nevada probably most likely is here. The federal government's here. So it's an army. It really is an army to put these out.
MONAHAN: About 4,000 personnel are now fighting the Park Fire. And with slightly cooler weather over the weekend, they were able to increase containment. But Griggs says any progress is tenuous.
GRIGGS: As soon as it gets hot, the weather's going to change. It'll probably get windy, getting drier. So it's off to the races. It's going to be a long battle.
MONAHAN: Local temperatures are projected to climb as the week goes on, and that could be extra hard on firefighters who commonly work 24-hour shifts. Justin Santos, firefighter engineer with the Santa Clara Fire Department, just got off of one.
JUSTIN SANTOS: Be perfectly honest with you, I don't know what day today is. Just one of those things - kind of becomes a little bit of a time warp.
MONAHAN: Fire officials expect the blaze and the incident base camp to continue for at least several weeks. Rick Carhart with Cal Fire.
CARHART: There's not really any way to tell how long this could be here, but it'll be here until the job's done.
MONAHAN: As the Park Fire continues pushing north and east, several thousand people are still under evacuation orders.
For NPR News, I'm Katherine Monahan in Chico, Calif.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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