Authorities in California have arrested a man in connection with a huge blaze that already has consumed more than 175 structures, many of them homes, and burned more than 4,000 acres north of San Francisco.
The suspect, Damin Anthony Pashilk, 40, was charged with multiple counts of arson. Investigators are working to determine whether he might be involved in other fires in the area, which has been plagued by wildfire for several years.
Dry conditions and high winds have made the Clayton fire nearly impossible to control. Nearly 1,500 residents fled their homes after it erupted Saturday in dry conditions created by the state’s extreme drought. On Sunday, the blaze doubled in size.
“The winds really kicked up, and the fire crossed over tentative lines in place [to slow its advance] and started impacting a whole new area,” Suzie Blankenship, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said Monday. “Once it creates that momentum, it really moves.”
The fire has added to a summer of misery in California. The state counts nine active wildfires as large as 25 acres or more, but since January more than 3,800 fires have scorched over 112,900 acres of state land. That’s 20 percent more fires than at this point last year, and well above the state’s five-year average of 3,200 fires and 85,900 acres for the same time span.
Wildfires are also charring federally owned land in the state. Add those in, and the number of fires shoots to 4,600 with more than 306,000 acres burned in 2016, according to Cal Fire.
As of Monday, the federal National Interagency Fire Center showed California leading the fire-prone West in the number, size and intensity of wildfires. In June, the U.S. Forest Service estimated that 26 million trees had died in six counties across 760,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada mountains that run along California’s spine – bringing the number of dead trees, which are fuel for fire, to 66 million during four years of drought. The service blames heat, dryness and a greedy little beetle for the devastation.
Major wildfires are raging across much of the rest of West, too, including in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Wyoming and Texas.
Last year, fires stretched up and down the Pacific Coast and burned more than 5 million acres in Alaska. The nationwide total of 10 million acres burned was historic, according to the Forest Service, the Agriculture Department division charged with fighting fires. Agriculture officials have been warning of fire seasons that start in March instead of June and last through December instead of ending in September. But they have been unable to persuade Congress to change what they call an outdated funding formula for calculating the Forest Service’s annual firefighting budget.
Others lament that governments allow homes to be built in fire plains, areas where wildfires erupt from lightning strikes, careless campsites or sparks flying from motorized equipment. Lightning ignited many of last year’s Alaska fires, and a campfire sparked one of this year’s fires in California.
The Clayton fire, near the community of Lower Lake about 100 miles north of San Francisco, remains under investigation. Property damage already totals $10.5 million and includes the office of the Lake County Habitat for Humanity, which helps build homes for lower-income families in the area. The nonprofit is now itself homeless.
“It’s totaled,” president Richard Birk said of the tiny blue house that serves as Habitat’s office, which is still standing but badly charred, with roof tiles burned off. The Habitat branch was in the midst of a campaign to help rebuild dozens of the 1,300 houses that residents lost in last year’s fire devastation.
As of Tuesday morning, he felt certain new homes being constructed were not affected by the last flames but was unsure about other properties under repair since fire authorities were still blocking access to many of those areas.
“There’s still some unknowns there,” Birk said. “The good news is we haven’t heard of any fatalities of any kind in this fire.”
There also are no reports of injuries, but nerves are on edge. Many of those who were evacuated are huddling at a local high school, a church and a casino.
“The fire fuels – grass, brush and limbs – are extremely dry,” Blankenship said. “The fire is heating them up as it moves forward. They could burst under that heat. You have embers created that are throwing sparks from 10 feet to a mile that start another wildfire. The fire is creating more fire as it moves forward.”
Fires in that part of Northern California are a serious matter. Last year alone, 213,000 acres there burned in three wildfires. The most serious, the Valley fire in Lake County, caused three deaths and destroyed nearly 1,500 buildings.
The county has “been impacted beyond historical numbers,” Blankenship said. She called the Valley fire phenomenal “just because of the conditions” and sympathized with the danger that residents seem to face every year.
“Here we are, Lake County again,” she said.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Darryl Fears
LENGTHY criminal history for Damin Pashilk, man accused of starting #claytonfire @FOX40 pic.twitter.com/aZhr3eRTnr
— Joe Khalil (@JoeKhalil_Media) August 16, 2016
