An ongoing fire is producing a plume of smoke that's combining with fog, held close to ground, under a temperature inversion to create this dangerous situation
In the 1950s, regulators knew every source of air pollution, from the incinerator to the automobile, had to be controlled. Polluting industries weren't happy.
is it just clean up time? reporter: we re not at clean up time because this is an active fire zone. the fire fight continues in the areas that surrounded this area and for hot spots that still remain within the city limits or within the town limits. what we re seeing is not much because, again, we continue to be under this inversion layer where the smoke just settles and rests in one place which is terrible, really terrible for air quality. county health departments as far away as the bay area are telling people just stay inside because it s so bad. however, it is good because as you see i m wearing a jacket. temperatures are cooler. humidity is a bit higher. there s no wind. this gives firefighters a chance to make progress on containment. it s almost seemingly impossible to stop the spread of the flames as the dixie fire has grown even larger. there are still 14,000 homes in
little town there. what are officials telling you? reporter: fire officials say they caught a break this weekend because of the red flag winds that pushed the fire into town here died down before the weekend. an inversion layer formed. it all formed in one spot, there was nothing to move it. so it settled. it makes the atmosphere cooler, humidity rises, temperatures drop, and they can get a handle on it, because there s no wind to move the fire to a new front. you can finally see behind me, the destruction is unlike anything i can describe. what this means, because you can see this inversion layer is starting to lift, so the worry is all of this smoke will be pushed out as it lifts up, almost like a dome, if you put it off, all that steam has to go somewhere. this is dangly wildfire smoke.