An 800-acre wildfire burning near Porterville reached 100% containment on Tuesday.
The Success Fire was sparked last week following a lightning storm. Roughly 172 firefighters were assigned to the Tulare County incident.
Cal Fire reported one injury and no structures damaged.
The fire is located near Success Valley and Reservation roads, just east of Porterville. Not far from the Success Fire is the largest active fire in Tulare County.
Nettle Fire
The Nettle Fire is located on the Tule River Reservation in East Porterville and as of Wednesday was 75% contained, according to National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC).
Tule River Fire Department is leading the firefighting effort with help from surrounding agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management. The roughly 120 firefighters assigned to the incident made significant progress over the last three days.
Tulare County recorded 423 new COVID-19 infections and 23 virus-related deaths in April, the lowest number in both categories since the pandemic began 13 months ago.
The record lows in new infections and deaths are in contrast to the 23,000 new COVID-19 infections and nearly 300 deaths the county saw in December and January.
Tulare County s COVID-19 current daily case rate is 2.6 per 100,000 population, and the positivity rate is 1.2%. The county scored 1.2% in the state s Healthy Place Index.
Tulare County s case rate has hovered between 2.6 and 3.3 cases per 100,000 for the past several weeks. To move from the orange tier to the even less restrictive yellow tier, the county s COVID-19 case rate must drop below 2.
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Thousands of patients have been treated in the tents set up outside Sierra View Medical Center s emergency department since they were put up more than a year ago.
Those tents came down this week amid an all-time low number of COVID-19 cases being treated at the Porterville hospital.
Beginning May 1, the hospital will also modify its visitor policy to allow one unique visitor for patients admitted to the emergency department.
The emergency-use tents were installed at the beginning of the pandemic s arrival in Tulare County to screen patients for the virus. The structures temporary use permits expired this month, and the hospital opted not to renew them due to the tent structures being underutilized for several weeks, the hospital said.