Three ranch hands walk across the burned out area where various outbuildings used to stand at the 8 Mile Ranch, north of Independence. About 26 outbuildings and six homes (but not the one at the ranch) were burned by the Inyo Complex fire. Photo by Keith Rainville

By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff

As the smoke clears from the 35,000-acre Inyo Complex fire, officials have discovered six homes were destroyed by the blaze, in addition to 27 outbuildings. The number of injured firefighters has also increased to 10. Reports also surfaced that the extreme heat from the flames licking at the edges of the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery had killed large numbers of the facility’s broodstock of golden trout.

On the plus side, the fires which threatened Independence and Big Pine were 80 percent contained Wednesday morning, and fire officials are confident enough that the worst is over to start redeploying personnel and equipment to other fires.
The number of firefighters assigned to the Inyo Complex fires Wednesday has dropped to 480. During the height of the firefighting effort, more than 1,100 wildland firefighters from across the state were battling the sprawling blazes. On Wednesday, only one helicopter was still assigned to the fire, with no air tankers on-scene. At one point, nine helicopters and three air tankers were leading the air assault on the fires.
The fires were started Friday night by lightning strikes, and eventually forced the closure of U.S. 395 on Friday night and Saturday when the flames ran downhill and jumped the highway north of Independence. Residents of the town were evacuated Saturday when the flames came marching down the sagebrush flankof the mountains west of town.   
As the fire threat receded, efforts began to help residents and visitors get back to normal. Plus, some state and federal money started to trickle in to help defray the cost of fighting the fire and replacing or repairing the Independence water plant. Promises of more money to come have also been received from state officials.
The Forest Service on Wednesday re-opened virtually all of the backcountry roads and trailheads that had been closed due to the fire.
Residents of Independence were still being advised to boil their water, but free, bottled water was handed out, door-to-door, on Tuesday, and water trucks were brought in to provide drinking water to residents.
Work has already begun on a temporary fix for the Independence water plant, which was burned down in the blaze. The groundwater pump that supplies the town water was still running strong, so the system was still full of water.
At first, it appeared that aggressive firefighting and plenty of water and fire retardant dropped from the choppers and planes had limited the number of homes lost in the fire to a single residence by the historic Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery.  

A hard-working crew of volunteers spent Tuesday delivering a donated gusher of Crystal Geyser water to Independence residents. The town?s water plant was destroyed during last weekend?s fire, prompting a boil water order. Residents can also get drinking water from several water trucks in town. Photo by Jon Klusmire

But as teams started to more fully explore the areas burned by the blaze, they found more homes had also been burned. On Wednesday morning, officials with the Inyo National Forest said six homes had been lost to the fast-moving flames. The exact locations of the homes were not being released, but the fire burned through the small, Oak Creek residential area northwest of Independence, and also burned around the fish hatchery, the grounds of which also contains numerous homes. The first confirmed loss of a home to the fire was a house near the hatchery.
Fourth District Inyo County Supervisor Jim Bilyeu said that the intense heat had virtually wiped out the hatchery’s prized golden trout broodstock, which are used to produce the eggs that are then raised to fingerling size and released in the backcountry.
In addition, about 27 outbuildings, generally barns, sheds and other structures, were also consumed by the flames, INF officials said, but did not offer exact locations of the burned buildings. The outbuildings around the 8 Mile Ranch, north of Independence, and the Bright Ranch in Oak Creek, were known to be lost, but in both cases the homes on the two ranches survived.
As teams continue to survey the damage done by the fire, it’s quite possible they will find more burned buildings, INF officials said.
Wednesday morning, INF officials re-opened nearly two dozen forest roads, campgrounds and trailheads that had been affected by the fire.
The only facilities still closed are the Sawmill and Baxter Pass trailheads and the Oak Creek Campground, which was burned by the fire, and the North Oak Creek Canyon Road (residents only can travel up the South Oak Creek Canyon Road).
On Tuesday, the Inyo County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a “state emergency” exists in Inyo County due to the fires. The board already declared a “local emergency” had been created by the fires.
The California Department of Forestry has already approved a blanket grant that will reimburse up to 75 percent of the costs borne by local fire departments which fought the blaze.
The state Department of Health Services has also made a $5,000 grant available to pay for drinking water in Independence.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also  announced that it would make federal disaster money available to agencies and fire departments that fought the Inyo Complex fire.
A representative from the governor’s office also promised support to help get the water plant back up and running.
That task is already under way, and in the meantime, residents welcomed the donation of 18 palettes of bottled water from Crystal Geyser, in Olancha. By Tuesday, volunteers at Owens Valley School had distributed almost all of the water, which came in cases of six-gallon jugs. The volunteers went door-to-door with the water, just to make sure no one went dry.
The county also brought in three trucks full of drinking water that Independence residents can tap until the boil order is lifted.
Getting clean drinking water back in the town’s taps could only take about a week. The county has rented five, 21,000 water tanks that will temporarily replace the fire-damaged Independence reservoir. All the tanks should be in town by Friday.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will be performing all the earthwork at the water plant to make room for the temporary tanks, and will also bring the tanks on-line and connect them to the town water system, the county said in a press release.  
As soon as that temporary treatment and storage system is in place, the system will be flushed and once the water passes state tests, the boil order will be lifted.
When safe drinking water is flowing again, the county will then take on the larger, more expensive project of deciding how to “move forward to provide the citizens of Independence with a permanent water system,” the press release notes.  
The nine-member fire crew that got caught in the flames at the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery and had to deploy their emergency fire shelters now have all been sent to hospitals for evaluation. Originally, only three firefighters who suffered minor burns were hospitalized, but officials said the six others started to experience respiratory problems, and were hospitalized, state fire officials said. All nine are expected to recover.
The fires are expected to continue to produce smoke for several days, especially at higher elevations, INF officials said.
One aspect of the fire that local residents will probably have to endure for quite some time literally arose Tuesday afternoon when winds whipped up a dust storm that stretched from Division Creek to Bishop.