Saturday night as I was driving home from the Mt View Art & Wine Fest I could see an orange light glowing over the hills to the east. I thought “Could that be a fire?” but then thought no. In the morning as I took the dogs for a morning walk ash rained down like so many gray snow flakes. It was the Valley Fire which started in Cobb, Lake County.
I was nervous to leave the animals but had to drive back to the fair Sunday morning. Lucky for us the fire was headed the opposite direction so I did feel okay to leave for the day. Evacuation would be so stressful but doable so I watched the fire updates from the fair.
This fire is so terrible and fast moving that close to 600 structures have already burned. What absolutely killed me were the reports that people had to flee so quickly that they didn’t have time to take their pets and livestock with them. I just started crying for all the devastation and animal lives lost in this event.
As of this morning:
- 67,000 acres burned
- 15% contained
- 13,000 people displaced
- 9,000 structures threatened
- 585 homes destroyed
- 2.362 fire workers
- 4 injured firefighters
- 1 confirmed death
If you feel moved like I did to help any way you can there is a website set up for item and financial donations. Lovelakecounty.org has lists of organizations that are helping and what they still need. I just gave a financial donation to Wine Country Animal Lovers so they could get whatever they needed. My heart goes out to all who are affected by this tragedy.