California Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday, November 10, issued emergency proclamations for two counties at opposite ends of the state — Humboldt County in the far north, hit in August by the Mile Post 18 Fire, and Imperial County in the far southeast, hit the same month by a violent monsoon storm — unlocking state and federal help for repairs that local governments have been carrying since the summer.
Source: Governor Gavin Newsom's Office via Lost Coast Outpost
The governor's office announced both proclamations from Sacramento on Tuesday. Neither disaster is new: the fire burned in August and the storm struck on August 12. What changed on Tuesday is the legal step that lets money move — for Humboldt, a route to federal highway-repair funding for State Route 96, and for Imperial, state disaster assistance for damaged infrastructure, according to the governor's office.
Humboldt County: a fire that cut into the only highway corridor
The Mile Post 18 Fire burned approximately 7,600 acres in Humboldt County in August, including on the Hoopa Valley Reservation, and caused significant damage to State Route 96, the governor's office said. State Route 96 is the highway corridor through the Hoopa area, and damage to it has direct consequences for residents who depend on that road for everyday travel.
Source: Governor Gavin Newsom's Office via Lost Coast Outpost
CAL FIRE's incident record puts the fire's start on August 7, 2026, at Highway 96 at Norton Creek, north of Hoopa, and lists its final size as 7,610 acres with 95 percent containment when the incident was finalized on September 1. CAL FIRE lists the cause as human and the administering unit as the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Hoopa Valley Tribe unit — a reminder that much of the ground that burned lies within the Hoopa Valley Reservation.
Source: CAL FIRE, MP18 Fire incident update, Sept. 1, 2026
At its height the fight was large. InciWeb, the federal incident-information system, recorded 1,644 personnel on the fire on August 21, when it was 74 percent contained, and more than 2,000 personnel on an earlier August update. Highway 96 was closed at points during the fire and, by CAL FIRE's September 1 update, had reopened to one-way controlled traffic between Hoopa and Weitchpec, while local roads including Hostler Ridge Road, Mill Creek Road and Big Hill Road faced closures during the incident, according to InciWeb updates.
Source: InciWeb, Mile Post 18 Fire daily update, Aug. 21, 2026
The emergency proclamation allows the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to request assistance through the Federal Highway Administration's Emergency Relief Program for highway repairs — the federal program that helps pay to restore disaster-damaged highways, according to the governor's office.
Imperial County: one August afternoon, 17 substations hit
In Imperial County, the August 12 storm brought torrential rainfall and strong winds, causing widespread flooding and debris flows and damaging electrical infrastructure, the governor's office said. Imperial County sits in California's far southeast, along the Arizona and Mexico borders, where summer monsoon storms can arrive as sudden, violent downpours rather than long spells of rain.
Source: Governor Gavin Newsom's Office via Lost Coast Outpost
The Imperial Irrigation District, the public utility that supplies power across the Imperial Valley, adopted its own local emergency proclamation on August 18, and its resolution is the most detailed official record of that afternoon. The district says the storm — which it calls the August 2026 Imperial Valley Monsoon Event — began on Wednesday, August 12 at approximately 4:00 p.m. and struck Calexico, Holtville, Heber, El Centro, Westmorland and surrounding areas. It damaged electric transmission and distribution infrastructure, affected 17 substations and knocked out power for five minutes or longer to 5,325 customers. By 4:00 p.m. on August 13, service had been restored to 5,050 customers, with 275 still without power, and the district said known damage included transmission lines, power poles and distribution equipment, with the full extent still under assessment.
Source: Imperial Irrigation District Resolution No. 19-2026
The emergency proclamation authorizes the Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) to provide assistance under the California Disaster Assistance Act to support infrastructure repairs in Imperial County, according to the governor's office.
Why a proclamation in November for disasters in August
Emergency proclamations are the paperwork that unlocks disaster money in California. A governor's proclamation allows state agencies to direct assistance to a county and, in the Humboldt case, allows Caltrans to formally ask Washington for a share of the highway repair bill through the Federal Highway Administration. The proclamations issued Tuesday do not announce new damage; they clear the way for the repair bills from August — a fire-damaged state highway in the north and storm-damaged power and public infrastructure in the southeast — to be paid with state and federal disaster funds instead of resting only on county and district budgets.
What happens next is administrative but concrete: Caltrans can now file its Emergency Relief Program request for State Route 96, and Cal OES can move California Disaster Assistance Act help toward Imperial County infrastructure repairs. The governor's office published the full text of both proclamations on Tuesday, one for Humboldt County and one for Imperial County. For drivers who use Highway 96 and for Imperial Valley households who lived through the August outages, Tuesday's signatures are the step that has to happen before permanent repair money, rather than emergency patching, can flow.