Residents in Lower Lake and surrounding communities are still recovering from California’s third-most-destructive wildfire a year ago, which burned 120 square miles and cost more than $1.5 billion in damages.
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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.
Officials say they will seek prosecution “to the fullest extent” to seek justice in this “horrific crime”.
The arson charges Pashilk faces in the Clayton Fire will also carry enhancements due to the destruction of homes and businesses.
No word of a motive.
With an arson suspect in custody, firefighters continued to make good progress overnight to extinguish the Clayton Fire in Lake County.
More than 175 structures have been destroyed, forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate. Pashilk was “wanted for parole violations in Napa” and was booked because he was a felon with a weapon and methamphetamine, the Lake County News wrote at the time. Here and there, amid the burned blocks, whole homes still stand.
One family burned out of Middletown by the 2015 Valley fire just lost their new home in Lower Lake up the road.
“The community has suffered significantly”, Pimlott added, saying damage from the fire was estimated to have topped $10 million.
Brown said Tuesday morning that even though someone is accused of starting the Clayton Fire, that sense of community just gets stronger.
A five-year drought has sapped the vegetation of moisture, and forecasts predicting temperatures in the high 90s may only exacerbate the fire. The fires briefly ran alongside each other.
Other than a pair of large blazes in the 1960s, which destroyed far fewer homes in a county that had just one-quarter its current 64,000 residents, lifelong resident and county Supervisor Jim Comstock can’t remember anything approaching the past year. CAL FIRE reports 1,500 structures are still threatened.
Still under investigation is the Jerusalem Fire, which burned more than 25,000 acres last summer in Lake and Napa counties.
Lisa Corrine Wilsey and her husband are nervously waiting to find out if their Lake County home was spared by the wildfire raging through the area.
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A local man has been arrested and charged with arson in the raging northern California fire that has destroyed several homes and flattened the downtown area of a small town.
