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SOUTH LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Fire officials say the Valley fire remains on track to being fully contained early next week.
Containment on the fire, which remains at 76,067 acres, has stayed at 97 percent since earlier this week.
The fire began on Sept. 12 in Cobb before spreading to the Hidden Valley Lake and Middletown areas.
A firefighting force of 397 personnel, 15 fire engines, 10 fire crews, eight water tenders, four helicopters and three dozers remain assigned to the incident on Friday, according to Cal Fire.
Cal Fire Capt. Joe Fletcher said firefighters are still clearing materials and doing mop up in the fire area.
Work to strengthen fire perimeter lines and landscape rehabilitation activities also are continuing to take place across the fire area, Cal Fire said.
As part of the mop up operation, Cal Fire said helicopters may be operating over the fire area.
Fletcher said the fire is expected to be 100-percent contained by Tuesday night.
Cal Fire said the cause of the Valley fire remains under investigation.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
Local attorney Dennis Fordham usually writes columns on estate planning, but his column this week looks at assistance available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, for Valley fire victims.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Many who lost homes in the Valley fire need assistance to replace lost income, to make repairs and to cover other expenses incurred due to the fire.
On Sept. 22, President Barack Obama declared Lake County to be a federal disaster area. Now Valley fire victims can apply for assistance from FEMA.
Let us discuss FEMA assistance.
People whose homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable can request temporary housing assistance (not to exceed a total of $31,900).
As long as one person in the household is a US Citizen or Qualified Alien the entire household may qualify, even though other persons do not qualify. Household income and location are factors in determining the amount of financial assistance.
Furthermore, anyone receiving needs based government benefits (e.g., SSI, Medi-Cal and Food Stamps) should not fear losing these benefits due to FEMA assistance. FEMA assistance does not count as a resource or income and so does not impact eligibility.
To apply, one person in the affected household must register with FEMA within 60 days of the emergency declaration, with the deadline set at Nov. 23.
To register, call 1-800-621-3362 (those who have a speech disability or hearing loss and use TTY, should call 1-800-462-7585 directly; for those who use 711 or Video Relay Service, call 1-800-621-3362); apply online at www.DisasterAssistance.gov ; or via smartphone at m.fema.gov.
Once registered with FEMA it is important to stay in contact with them and to keep records of your expenses.
Keep a copy of the FEMA application and number. FEMA will then inspect your residence, issue a notice of eligibility, and provide two months of rental assistance at a time (with renewal applications).
Besides rental assistance, FEMA, through the Small Business Administration or SBA, lends up to $200,000 for “other than housing” needs to repair or replace one’s primary residence (only) for the following purposes: (1) habitable repairs only; (2) medical and dental expenses; (3) funeral and burial expenses; (4) replacing destroyed household items; (5) replacing destroyed cars; and (6) moving expenses. The money is a loan that must be repaid. The foregoing requires keeping good records of these paid expenses.
FEMA is a last resort and not a primary source of funds to repair or replace residences. Victims should make private insurance claims against any insurance policy they have that covers the damages incurred.
If FEMA advances money for repairs it does so in expectation of being repaid once insurance monies are received by the victim for such repairs.
That said, in some cases, FEMA provides additional direct assistance for repair expenses not covered by insurance.
Also, if a fire victim loses his or her income as a result of the fire – such as their place of business being destroyed or it becomes inaccessible due to road closures – then he or she should apply for state unemployment assistance first, and then also apply with FEMA for unemployment income.
It is good that during these difficult times that FEMA is another possible source of assistance, in addition to private insurance, state assistance, and charitable organizations, which is now available to Valley fire victims.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney (LL.M. tax studies), is a State Bar Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, California. Fordham can be reached by e-mail at
Oct. 4 to 10 is National Fire Prevention Week, and Cal Fire says it's a good time to make sure all homes have working smoke alarms.
Almost two-thirds of all home fire deaths occur in homes without a smoke alarm or no working smoke alarm.
Working smoke alarms can reduce a person’s chance of dying in a home fire by half, and they provide the precious time needed to escape the home in the event of a fire.
Fifty percent of fire deaths result from fires reported at night between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. when most people are asleep.
Home smoke alarms can alert people to a fire before it spreads, giving family and friends enough time to get out.
“In a fire, seconds count,” said California State Fire Marshal Tonya Hoover. “Think of your smoke alarm as the nose or eyes on the ceiling just smelling or seeing. When it smells or sees products of combustion like smoke, it alarms everyone at home to the danger.”
Cal Fire urges Californians to have working smoke alarms on every level in homes, in every sleeping area, and in the hallways leading to the sleeping areas.
These alarms should be hard-wired with a battery backup in case of a power outage. In California, new smoke alarms have a 10-year long battery life which means no need to change the battery.
According to the latest National Fire Prevention Association research, working smoke alarms cut the chance of dying in a fire in half.
Meanwhile, three out of five fire deaths resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms.
So, what can residents do?
Inspect all smoke alarms every month, clean them annually, and replace the entire smoke alarm every ten years. If an alarm “chirps,” warning the battery is low, replace the smoke alarm battery immediately if the alarm is not a long life battery smoke alarm.
If a smoke alarm sounds, crawl low and go outside to your meeting place. Everyone should be able to do this in less than two minutes. Once outside, call 911. Make sure that nobody goes back inside for anything.
This Fire Prevention Week Cal Fire is asking all Californians to improve their own safety by having working smoke alarms in every bedroom and on every level of your home.
“Make sure you, your family, and guests know what to do when the alarm sounds because it could be the sound that saves your lives,” said Chief Hoover.
For more information about smoke alarms and home fire safety, visit the Cal Fire Web site at www.fire.ca.gov .
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted a general order on Friday to protect the environment from discharges associated with cannabis cultivation activities.
Most of Lake County – including all of Clear Lake – is under the jurisdiction of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board; the rest of the county, particularly areas in the Mendocino National Forest, is governed by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.
The board's order serves as a permit that will be issued to landowners and cultivators engaged in growing medicinal cannabis as long as they meet specific conditions, including those imposed by local ordinances.
The order will regulate discharges from medicinal cannabis cultivation operations to ensure that fertilizers and silt don’t impact waters of the state, which includes both surface and ground waters.
The general order requires cultivators to implement best management practices, and coverage and requirements in the order are based on a site’s threat to water quality, as determined by specific physical characteristics of the cultivation operations and proximity to wetlands or watercourses.
“Our goal is to protect water quality and the environment from the significant impacts that may occur from cannabis cultivation,” said Pamela Creedon, Central Valley Water Board executive officer.
The order includes standard conditions to address erosion control and drainage features; stream and wetland buffers; water storage and use; irrigation runoff, fertilizers and pesticides; petroleum products and other chemicals and wastes.
Enrollees are not exempted from the need to comply with applicable local ordinances or state and federal laws.
Cannabis cultivation in the Central Valley Region has increased significantly in recent years, both in the number and the size of operations.
The Central Valley Water Board has serious concerns about the water quality impacts from this dramatic increase in cannabis cultivation activity on both public and private land.
The State Water Resources Control Board and regional boards are committed to helping educate both the public and cultivators about proper permitting and cultivation practices in their respective water board regions.
The Central Valley Water Board held multiple public workshops throughout its region during August and September to receive input on the Draft General Order.
The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted its general order for cannabis cultivation on Aug. 13. For more information on its program, see the North Coast Regional Board’s Web site.
Additionally, local, state and federal agencies, including the State Water Board and regional boards, are working together in task forces to find illegal growing operations and enforce applicable laws.
To learn more about what the State Water Board and regional boards are doing relative to the environmental impacts of cannabis cultivation, visit the State Water Board resource page.
The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board is a California state agency responsible for the preservation and enhancement of the quality of California’s water resources.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best color and the highest resolution images yet of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon – and these pictures show a surprisingly complex and violent history.
At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. Many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they’re finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more.
“We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low,” said Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team from the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, “but I couldn't be more delighted with what we see."
High-resolution images of the Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon, taken by New Horizons as the spacecraft sped through the Pluto system on July 14 and transmitted to Earth on Sept. 21, reveal details of a belt of fractures and canyons just north of the moon’s equator.
This great canyon system stretches more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across the entire face of Charon and likely around onto Charon’s far side. Four times as long as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep in places, these faults and canyons indicate a titanic geological upheaval in Charon’s past.
“It looks like the entire crust of Charon has been split open,” said John Spencer, deputy lead for GGI at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “With respect to its size relative to Charon, this feature is much like the vast Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars.”
The team has also discovered that the plains south of the Charon’s canyon – informally referred to as Vulcan Planum – have fewer large craters than the regions to the north, indicating that they are noticeably younger. The smoothness of the plains, as well as their grooves and faint ridges, are clear signs of wide-scale resurfacing.
One possibility for the smooth surface is a kind of cold volcanic activity, called cryovolcanism.
“The team is discussing the possibility that an internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, and the resulting volume change could have led to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based lavas to reach the surface at that time,” said Paul Schenk, a New Horizons team member from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
Even higher-resolution Charon images and composition data are still to come as New Horizons transmits data, stored on its digital recorders, over the next year – and as that happens, “I predict Charon’s story will become even more amazing!” said mission Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
The New Horizons spacecraft is currently 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth, with all systems healthy and operating normally.
New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. APL designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the science mission, payload operations, and encounter science planning.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lakeport Rotary's annual Konocti Challenge cycling event will be back on the road this weekend.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Konocti Challenge, one of Lake County's most popular events, which takes off and ends in Lakeport on Saturday.
Lake County may be a bit battered and bruised by this summer’s string of fires that have ripped through thousands of acres of its terrain, but it is certainly not beaten.
During these past months, community members have demonstrated just how resilient they are and shown that they can certainly rise to the challenge.
“This community needs this event with these cyclists here now more than ever. It's a time of rebuilding and people need to see that we are open for business and the beauty that is Lake County is firmly intact,” said Ride Director and Lakeport Rotary President Jennifer Strong.
The Konocti Challenge brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars to the local economy each year as the majority of the registered cyclists are coming from out of county, Strong said.
“This is a really unique event for Lake County as it encompasses the entire county. Therefore, if you see a cyclist, thank them for coming and most importantly, share the road,” Strong said.
Strong said the ride has had to slim down a bit this year because of the Valley fire's damage to Cobb mountain and Middletown, an area where the 100 mile-route goes.
“There are still major infrastructure repairs occurring in that area so we've asked our 100-mile cyclists to take on the 65-mile this year and they've been more than happy to do that,” Strong said.
The 65-mile is an award-winning route voted Cycle California! magazine's Best Metric Century of 2014. It's a major distinction in a state with hundreds of metric century rides.
The three routes that are available this year are the 65-mile, 40-mile and 20-mile, and there is zero fire damage on any of those routes.
“Because of some of the late rains we had, the lake and the terrain are actually more beautiful this year than I can ever remember seeing,” said Strong.
There will be many additional celebrations occurring including a complimentary wine tasting and live music provided by the LC Diamonds at the Friday check-in and registration from 4 to 7 p.m.
There also will be a silent auction, fire relief t-shirt sales and quilt raffle to support the Lake Area Rotary Fire Relief Fund.
The event is held at the Skylark Shores Resort in Lakeport and ride registration is available on Friday from 3 to 7 p.m. and Saturday beginning at 6 a.m.
For more information go to www.konoctichallenge.com or call Jennifer Strong at 707-349-0815.