Yosemite Rim Fire 13th largest in California history, 20 percent contained

NBC (Bay Area): After battling the Rim Fire raging on the outskirts of Yosemite National Park for the last nine days, state and federal fire crews on Monday had contained 20 percent of the wildfire - now the size of Chicago. That is more than double the containment from the day before, and much more than the 2 percent containment for most of the fire reported on Aug. 17 in the heart of the Stanislaus National Forest.

Still, 4,500 structures and San Francisco's water and power supply remained threatened by the Rim Fire, California's 13th largest in history. The total number of acres burned stood at nearly 170,000 on Monday evening.

"Firefighters have a real challenge on their hands," Gov. Jerry Brown said after touring the charred landscape in the afternoon. "This is one of the worst." He said he's make sure the "resources" in terms of "funding and talent" would be made available to continue fighting the Rim Fire, and he thanked everyone battle the blaze - and breathing the noxious air. Without being too specific, he assured the crowd that "California has the money" to fight the fire.

To date, 23 structures burned in the fire, including a popular Bay Area camp - Berkeley Tuolumne Family Camp - an institution for Bay Area families since 1922, which was totally destroyed sometime on Sunday....

The Rim Fire on August 17, 2013, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license