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Firefighters are performing backburns along Limantour Road to clean up the understory, so the fire won’t spread to the canopy of dry moss and branches above. Almost half of the Woodward Fire’s acreage is a result of these preventive ignitions.   David Briggs

Anxiety has turned to cautious optimism as containment approaches 100 percent on the Woodward Fire this week. Lower humidity and temperatures approaching triple digits over the holiday weekend tested the 4,900-acre blaze, which stayed within the box that firefighters have built around it. 

An evacuation order was lifted on 90 homes, and all evacuation . . .