Evacuated areas included the ski-resort town of Wrightwood, where some 4,500 people live.
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Firefighting aircraft and 500 personnel were attacking the blaze, whose cause was being investigated.
“That an arson investigator can find within two days it was arson, but it took a year to confirm the (cause of the) Valley Fire?”.
“It looks like it’s going to be a long night right now”.
Firefighters in Northern California are continuing to battle a blaze that has destroyed at least 175 homes and businesses and forced 4,000 people to flee their homes.
They say Pashilk is being charged with 17 counts of arson in connection to the Clayton fire, as well as several other fires across Lake County over the past year.
Lake County News has a post providing information for people hoping to make monetary donations to aid those affected by the fire.
Fire crews have gained even more ground against on a Northern California wildfire that has destroyed 175 homes, businesses and other structures and charred almost 7 square miles.
“Breathing smoke again, just like a year ago”, Shannon Anderson, a partner in the ranch, said as she panted into the telephone.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the fast-moving wildfire was more than six square miles and just 5 percent contained Monday night.
After 1,500 acres burned past year on the 1,700-acre ranch where Comstock grew up and still lives, he has cleared out brush to make fire breaks – a ritual familiar to other Californians who live in areas traditionally associated with wildfires.
Firefighters couldn’t protect all of historic Main Street and flames burned a winery, an antiques store, old firehouse and the Habitat for Humanity office. The high school is still unharmed, according to SFGate.com, but the sports fields were burned, and classes have been canceled indefinitely.
“What I’d do to him, you don’t want to know”, said Butch Cancilla, who saw his neighbor’s home catch fire as he fled on Sunday. No injuries have been reported, but pets have died as flames swept into Lower Lake, a small town about 90 miles north of San Francisco.
Chief Ken Pimlott, Cal Fire’s director, said Pashilk is believed to be responsible not just for the Clayton fire but a series of fires in Lake County over the past year.
This weekend was a tough one for us, in great part because we could see the huge plume of smoke from the Clayton Fire from our driveway … and it reminded us of the awful Valley Fire from last September.
Sgt. Jeff Nichols of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office told The Tribune that some 250 homes have been evacuated in the area.
The fire was burning in an area of grassy woodland with heavy brush that was hard for fire-fighters to access, Cal Fire said.
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In the past week, however, three smaller fires had erupted on the town’s edges: one jumped Highway 29, another raced to the back door of a social services agency downtown, a third threatened a nearby mobile home park.
