California Burning, Part 3—In Our Own Backyard

  • [photo by Paula Harvey, Lockwood Valley]

    [photo by Paula Harvey, Lockwood Valley]

A Special Series on Wildfires

By Patric Hedlund, TME

Wildfire has come to our own backyard in these Mountain Communities. It will come here again.

This month is the fourteenth anniversary of the Day fire, caused by an illegal campfire to the south, near Pyramid Lake.

The Day fire ripped through the backcountry in 2006. As it bore down on Lockwood Valley, the integrated fire command under the U.S. Forest Service advised Lockwood Valley residents to evacuate their livestock in preparation for possible total evacuation.

Horses from Lockwood Valley were trailered to Pine Mountain Club. Then the fire picked up speed. It burned the chaparral, grasslands and forest in Lockwood Valley, jumping Boy Scout Camp Road. If it had continued to rage further up the mountaintop on the other side, it would…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

While others were evacuating from the Day fire, Paula Harvey of Lockwood Valley walked out on a ridge to photograph a tsunami of flames and smoke roaring across the landscape toward her.

The Thomas fire also came creeping our way from the south, this time from electric lines blown together by high winds near Fillmore. At its worst, over 8,500 firefighters were mobilized to fight the Thomas fire, the largest number of firefighters mobilized to combat any wildfire in California history, costing well over $204 million. It started on December 4, 2017 and burned until March 22, 2018— 281,893 acres. It destroyed 1,063 structures and caused one civilian and one firefighter death, forcing over 104,600 residents to evacuate. Rick Throckmorton of Aspen Helicopters sent this photo.

Day fire Incident Command thoroughly briefed the community before evacuations began. The Day fire finally stopped in Lockwood Valley.

Left, Top—Fires have come very close in recent years.
The Best Rest Inn (now Motel 6) and the Flying J
in Lebec are shown with a curtain of flames bearing down on them in 2005.

Left, Bottom—Frazier Mountain High School’s Falcon Field also narrowly missed being part of the conflagration during the Grand fire in 2013.

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This is part of the September 25, 2020 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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