Sacramento Fire Department crews spent much of the past week chasing flames along the American River Parkway, a stretch of popular trail that offers no fire hydrants and plenty of hard-to-reach brush. Crews responded to six or seven fires in the area on Tuesday alone, followed by at least two more Wednesday and another Thursday, all clustered near Northgate Boulevard. Investigators suspect the fires may have been human-caused, though nobody has determined whether they were deliberately set.
A Week of Flare-Ups Near Northgate Boulevard
According to CBS News, the repeated fires have piled pressure onto firefighting resources at a moment when regional fire risk is already elevated. Crews have leaned on thermal-imaging drones and additional resources to track down and extinguish the blazes in terrain the outlet describes as difficult to access. Complicating matters further, the Parkway has no fire hydrants and no cameras, meaning crews often work blind and without a nearby water source.
Fire officials said people likely started the fires, but stopped short of calling them arson. Confirming intentional ignition, the station's report notes, requires direct evidence such as someone actually witnessing a person set a fire. Justin Sylvia described the fires as suspicious in nature and said they destroy a Sacramento community asset, according to the same report.
Rangers Step Up Patrols as Fire Danger Lingers
Park rangers are increasing patrols along the river and contacting people who may be illegally camping in the area, per the CBS Sacramento account. Officials stressed that fall weather does not mean fire danger has subsided — conditions remain very critical even as temperatures cool. The warning lands alongside widespread public safety power shutoffs already underway across much of the region, which PG&E said were intended to reduce wildfire risk; the utility reported more than 68,300 customers without power across 25 California counties, according to CBS News Sacramento.
Not the First Cluster of Suspicious Blazes
This is far from the first time multiple fires have broken out along the Parkway in a short span. In July 2022, three separate grass fires spanned a half-mile stretch of the trail just west of Rossmoor Drive in Rancho Cordova, and KCRA reported that firefighters believed somebody intentionally set them. Crews in that incident had to shuttle water from a hydrant more than a mile away, and an arson investigator combed the area for evidence, though no structures were threatened and nobody was hurt.
A separate case that same month involved a youth suspected of lighting a legal firework and throwing it into the air, sparking a grass fire, according to the Sacramento Bee. That youth was arrested and released with a citation the following day after an arson investigation. Years earlier, on October 9, 2019, six grass fires broke out in the lower Parkway within a short time span, circumstances investigators at the time called suspicious because of how closely clustered they were.
A Pattern That Keeps Climbing
Fire activity on the Parkway has trended upward for years. Sacramento city firefighters responded to 62 fires on the Parkway in 2020, up from 22 the year before, while Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District crews responded to 51 fires on their portion of the Parkway that same year, up from 21 in 2019, the Sacramento Bee reported. The county's chief park ranger said at the time that officials believed multiple fires were arsons based on where and how they started and the apparent movement of the person setting them, though no arrests had been made in connection with those fires. Almost all of the fires that year reportedly ignited in or around homeless camps, rangers estimated close to 60 fires had started that year alone, more than half the prior year's total.
By 2021, the numbers had grown sharply: more than 200 fires burned across over 15% of the Parkway, according to the American River Parkway Foundation. That figure and the Sacramento Bee's roughly 60-fire estimate come from different years and sources and should not be read as describing the same count. One grass fire tracked by ABC10 grew to about 125 acres and drew roughly 125 firefighters from three departments, and two more fires broke out along the river just days later, though neither required evacuations.
The stakes for the Parkway are significant given how many people pass through it. More than five million visits occur there each year, according to CBS News Sacramento. With fire officials still unable to say whether this week's fires were intentionally set, and with critical fire weather persisting into fall, rangers and fire crews are left watching one of the region's busiest green spaces for the next flare-up.
