California wildfire intelligence · Monterey County
Big Sur Wildfires 2026: Timber & Plaskett Fire records.
Two large active incidents, one coastal corridor and very different containment trajectories. This page connects the Timber and Plaskett records without collapsing them into a single fire story.
For current road, evacuation and life-safety information, use official sources. Values here are a dated editorial snapshot.
Two incident records
The Big Sur corridor is carrying two different fire histories.
Timber and Plaskett are both large Monterey County incidents associated with the wider Big Sur / Highway 1 operational area, but their current containment and documented evolution differ substantially.
Timber Fire
Its record is especially useful for understanding how a rapidly changing perimeter can make containment percentage move in non-intuitive ways, plus the transition toward heat detection, patrol and suppression repair.
Plaskett Fire
Its record preserves a current acreage difference between two CAL FIRE publishing surfaces and documents rapid first-week growth followed by high containment.
Highway 1
Road status belongs to a timestamp.
Both incident histories include Highway 1 impacts, but road closures and reopenings changed repeatedly as operations progressed. Tecnobosque preserves those statements as dated evidence instead of presenting an old closure as current travel advice.
CAL FIRE reported Highway 1 fully reopened in its 14 September update while warning that firefighting equipment and operations remained along the corridor.
Earlier updates documented closures along portions of the southern Big Sur coast while crews worked in steep, difficult-access terrain.
Compare the numbers
Why acreage and containment need context.
Timber reached a stage where mapped acreage changed dramatically and containment did not move monotonically upward. Plaskett, by contrast, moved toward very high containment while later acreage changes were relatively small.
That contrast is useful because it shows why neither acreage nor containment should be treated as a single severity score.
Provenance
Primary official routes.
Published 21 September 2026. The two Tecnobosque incident pages contain the detailed source chronology and evidence notes behind this cluster page.