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MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. – An early Saturday morning fire on the Mendocino National Forest was likely human-caused, forest officials reported.
Fire crews responded to a fire reported at 1:50 a.m. Saturday near Gravelly Valley Airstrip, located north of Lake Pillsbury on the Upper Lake Ranger District of the Mendocino National Forest, according to a forest report.
The Gravelly Fire was contained at approximately one acre before 6 a.m., a report from Mendocino National Forest headquarters stated. Mop up continued throughout Saturday.
While the exact cause of the fire is currently under investigation, with no lightning in the area, it is likely human-caused, forest officials said.
In addition, as deer hunting in “A Zone” – in the southern portion of the Mendocino National Forest – continues, with more people in the forest, there is increased potential for human-caused fires, the report noted.
“Today marks 70 years of Smokey Bear’s fire prevention message that human-caused wildfires can be prevented by being aware and taking precautionary measures in the forest,” said acting Deputy Fire Chief Eddie Childs. “That our firefighters responded to a likely human-caused fire this morning serves as a reminder that we need to be vigilant whether we are recreating or working in the forest.”
Forest officials note that there are many unexpected things that can cause a spark – like a chain hitting rocks on a gravel road, a bullet deflecting off a rock, the heat from an exhaust pipe in tall grass or even the possibility of campfires relighting in exceedingly dry conditions. It only takes a single spark or ember to start a fire.
As hunting season continues across the forest, visitors are asked to be careful.
“The Mendocino National Forest has been very fortunate this season to not have a large wildfire,” said Childs. “But historically, many of the forest’s largest fires have been human caused, with many of those started during late summer and fall as hunters and other recreational visitors come to enjoy the forest. It’s very important for both public and firefighter safety to remain vigilant and careful with anything that could spark a fire, especially now as fire suppression resources are becoming increasingly scarce due to ongoing fire activity across the West.”
For more information, please contact the Mendocino National Forest at 530-934-3316 or visit www.fs.usda.gov/mendocino .
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Mendocino College will host a community open house on Wednesday, Aug. 13, at its Lake Center.
The event will take place from 4 to 6 p.m. at the campus, 2565 Parallel Drive in Lakeport.
Community members will have the opportunity to learn more about the classes and programs offered at Mendocino College, register for classes, meet the college staff and administration, and even win free prizes.
Lake County Friends of Mendocino College and Lake County News are sponsoring a free hot dog barbecue at the event.
Mendocino College bookstore services also will be on campus to purchase textbooks.
Mendocino College is offering a variety of courses at the Lake Center this fall and hopes to share more about those opportunities with the community.
For more about Mendocino College visit http://www.mendocino.edu/ .
Three massive volcanic eruptions occurred on Jupiter's moon Io, a satellite the size of Earth's moon, within a two-week period last August, leading astronomers to speculate that these presumed rare outbursts, which can send material hundreds of miles above the surface, might be much more common than previously thought.
“We typically expect one huge outburst every one or two years, and they're usually not this bright,” said Imke de Pater, professor and chair of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of one of two papers describing the eruptions. “Here we had three extremely bright outbursts, which suggest that if we looked more frequently we might see many more of them on Io.”
Io, the innermost of Jupiter's four large “Galilean” moons, is about 2,300 miles across, and, aside from Earth, is the only known place in the solar system with volcanoes erupting extremely hot lava like that seen on Earth.
Because of Io's low gravity, large volcanic eruptions produce an umbrella of debris that rises high into space.
De Pater's long-time colleague and coauthor Ashley Davies, a volcanologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., said that the recent eruptions match past events that spewed tens of cubic miles of lava over hundreds of square miles in a short period of time.
“These new events are in a relatively rare class of eruptions on Io because of their size and astonishingly high thermal emission,” he said. “The amount of energy being emitted by these eruptions implies lava fountains gushing out of fissures at a very large volume per second, forming lava flows that quickly spread over the surface of Io.”
All three events, including the largest, most powerful eruption of the trio on 29 Aug. 2013, were likely characterized by “curtains of fire”, as lava blasted out of fissures perhaps several miles long.
The papers, one with lead author Katherine de Kleer, a UC Berkeley graduate student, and coauthored by UC Berkeley research astronomer Máté Ádámkovics, and the other coauthored by Ádámkovics and David R. Ciardi of Caltech's NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, have been accepted for publication in the journal Icarus.
Lava fountains on Io
De Pater discovered the first two massive eruptions on Aug. 15, 2013, using the near-infrared camera (NIRC2) coupled to the adaptive optics system on the Keck II telescope, one of two 10-meter telescopes operated by the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
The brightest, at a caldera named Rarog Patera, was calculated to have produced a 50 square-mile, 30-foot thick lava flow, while the other, close to another caldera called Heno Patera, produced flows covering 120 square miles.
Both were located in Io's southern hemisphere, near its limb, and were nearly gone when imaged five days later.
De Pater discovered a third and even brighter eruption – one of the brightest ever seen on Io – on Aug. 29 at the start of a year-long series of Io observations led by de Kleer, using both the Near-Infrared Imager with adaptive optics on the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, and the SpeX near-infrared spectrometer on NASA's nearby Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF).
De Kleer used the fortuitous detection of this outburst simultaneously at Gemini and the IRTF to show that the eruption temperature is likely much higher than typical eruption temperatures on Earth today, “indicative of a composition of the magma that on Earth only occurred in our planet’s formative years,” de Kleer said.
At the time of the observation, the thermal source had an area of up to 32 square miles. The modelled temperature of the lava indicated it had barely had time to cool, suggesting that the event was dominated by lava fountains.
“We are looking at several cubic miles of lava in rapidly emplaced flows,” said Davies, who has developed models to predict the volume of magma erupted based on spectroscopic observations. “This will help us understand the processes that helped shape the surfaces of all the terrestrial planets, including Earth, and the moon.”
The team tracked the heat of the third outburst for almost two weeks after its discovery to investigate how volcanoes influence Io’s atmosphere and how these eruptions feed a doughnut of ionized gas – the Io plasma torus – that surrounds Jupiter near Io’s orbit.
De Kleer timed her Gemini and IRTF observations to coincide with observations of the plasma torus by the Japanese HISAKI (SPRINT-A) spacecraft, which is in orbit around Earth, so she can correlate the different data sets.
A volcanic laboratory
Volcanoes were first noted on Io in 1979, and subsequent studies by the Galileo spacecraft, which first flew by Io in 1996, and ground-based telescopes show that eruptions and lava fountains occur constantly, creating rivers and lakes of lava.
But large eruptions, creating vast lava flows in some cases thousands of square miles in area, were thought to be rare. Only 13 were observed between 1978 and 2006, in part because only a handful of astronomers, de Pater among them, regularly scan the moon.
Davies' interest in Io's volcanoes arises from the moon's resemblance to an early Earth when heat from the decay of radioactive elements – much more intense than radiogenic heating today – created exotic, high-temperature lavas.
Io remains volcanically active for a different reason – Jupiter and the moons Europa and Ganymede constantly tug on it – but the current eruptions on Io are likely similar to those that shaped the surfaces of inner solar system planets such as Earth and Venus in their youth.
“We are using Io as a volcanic laboratory, where we can look back into the past of the terrestrial planets to get a better understanding of how these large eruptions took place, and how fast and how long they lasted,” Davies said.
In a third paper accepted by Icarus, de Pater, Davies and their colleagues summarize a decade of Io observations with the Keck II and Gemini telescopes.
Their map of the surface of Io pinpointed more than two dozen hot spots whose spatial distribution changed significantly between 2001 and 2010.
In 2010 the hot spots were dominated by two volcanic centers: Loki Patera, an extremely large active lava lake on Io, and Kanehekili Fluctus, an area of continuing pahoehoe lava flows.
The team hopes that monitoring Io's surface annually will reveal the style of volcanic eruptions on the moon, constrain the composition of the magma, and accurately map the spatial distribution of the heat flow and potential variations over time.
This information is essential to get a better understanding of the physical processes involved in the heating and cooling processes on Io, de Pater said.
The work is funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA's Outer Planets Research and Planetary Geology and Geophysics Programs.
Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – A fundraiser in memory of a young Lake County soldier who died in 2012 will take place this coming weekend.
The second annual horseshoe tournament in honor of Sgt. Richard Essex will be held beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 16, at 5050 Konocti Road in Kelseyville, across from the elementary school.
The tournament takes place on the second anniversary of the death of Essex, who at age 23 was killed when the Black Hawk helicopter in which he was a gunner crashed near Shah Wali Kot, Afghanistan.
He grew up in Kelseyville and was – in the words of family members – an “adrenaline junkie.” At the same time, he was a thoughtful young man who also grew to be a gifted writer, and published two books of poems.
The Aug. 16 fundraiser in his memory will benefit Kelseyville-based Operation Tango Mike, an organization that over the past decade has sent monthly care packages to US troops overseas.
The cost per two-person team for the horseshoe tournament is $40.
Preregistration will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15, and also at 8 a.m. Aug. 16.
Prizes are $200 for first place, $100 for second pace and $75 for third place.
For more information about the Essex fundraiser, call 707-263-5981.
For more information about Operation Tango Mike, visit http://www.operationtangomike.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/pages/OPERATION-TANGO-MIKE/118847931474466 .
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has a big group of dogs, many of them working breeds, who need homes this week.
The dogs range in age from 9 months to 3 years, and include mixes of Doberman Pinscher, Shih Tzu, shepherd, pit bull and Catahoula Leopard Dog.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.
In addition to the animals featured here, all adoptable animals in Lake County can be seen here: http://bit.ly/Z6xHMb .
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).
Shepherd-pit bull terrier
This female shepherd-pit bull terrier is of undetermined age.
She weighs 22 pounds, and has a short tan and white coat.
Shelter staff did not report if she has been altered.
She's in kennel No. 2, ID No. 40343.
'Jo Jo'
“Jo Jo” is a 3-year-old male terrier-Shih Tzu mix.
He has a long brown and white coat, and green eyes, weighs nearly 14 pounds and has been neutered.
Jo Jo is in kennel No. 4, ID No. 40421.
'Ocean'
“Ocean” is a 1-year-old male pit bull terrier mix.
He weights 64 pounds, has a short black and white coat, and has been neutered.
Find him in kennel No. 5, ID No. 40488.
Female pit bull terrier mix
This female pit bull terrier mix is 3 years old.
She weighs 46 pounds and has a short brown brindle coat. Shelter staff did not report is she has been spayed.
She's in kennel No. 8, ID No. 40496.
Greyhound mix
This female greyhound mix is of undetermined age.
She has a short coat and weighs 40 pounds. It was not reported if she has been spayed.
Find her in kennel No. 9, ID No. 40453.
'Chief'
“Chief” is a 1-year-old Catahoula Leopard Dog mix.
He has a short black and gray coat, weighs 60 pounds and has not been neutered.
He's in kennel No. 10, ID No. 40505.
Female shepherd mix
This female shepherd mix is 9 months old.
She has a short red and white coat and weighs 47 pounds. It was not reported if she has been spayed.
Find her in kennel No. 11, ID No. 40445.
'Bolt'
“Bolt” is a 3-year-old pit bull terrier mix.
He has a short blue coat, weighs 58 pounds and has been neutered.
He's in kennel No. 14, ID No. 40478.
Pit bull terrier-Doberman Pinscher mix
This male pit bull terrier-Doberman Pinscher mix is 2 years old.
He has a short brown and tan coat, weighs 57 pounds and has not been neutered.
Find him in kennel No. 17, ID No. 40446.
'Sparkey'
“Sparkey” is a 3-year-old pit bull mix.
He weighs 77 pounds and has a short tan and white coat. He has been neutered.
Sparkey is in kennel No. 29, ID No. 40350.
To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Three Bay Area residents are charged in connection with an early morning burglary last week at a Hidden Valley Lake bar during which two of the subjects attempted to cut open an ATM machine.
Vallejo residents Glenn Anthony Ramirez, 44, and Ashley Lorraine Meyers, 23, were arrested July 30 in connection to the attempt to steal the ATM machine in Mulligan's Bar in Hidden Valley Lake, according to case documents.
Ramirez was arrested just before 4:30 a.m. that day on several felony charges related to the break-in as well as two felony outside agency warrants, according to jail records.
Meyers was taken into custody at Twin Pine Casino just after 7 a.m. July 30, according to Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff.
She was arrested on felony charges of conspiracy to commit a crime and being an accessory, and misdemeanor possession of controlled substance paraphernalia. She also was found in possession of burglary tools.
Hinchcliff said that this week Ramirez and Meyers were charged as codefendants in the case, with Ramirez making a court appearance Tuesday.
The charges against Ramirez include conspiracy to commit a crime, use of an acetylene torch or a cutting tool for breaking into a safe, felony vehicle theft with a prior and felony vandalism, Hinchcliff said.
Meyers is charged with burglary, conspiracy and possession of burglary tools, according to Hinchcliff.
She was reported to have been found in possession of a driver's license belonging to 46-year-old Billy Vassiliou of Martinez, alleged to be the third suspect in the case.
The District Attorney's Office also has filed charges against Vassiliou that include safecracking, possession of stolen property and vandalism. Vassiliou was not taken into custody and has not made any court appearances, Hinchcliff said.
The complaint the District Attorney's Office filed against Vassiliou shows that he has numerous prior theft-related felony convictions out of Contra Costa County.
According to a statement issued to Lake County News by the Hidden Valley Lake Association's leadership, Davis Fox – a Hidden Valley Lake Security officer – and sheriff's Deputy Walter White halted the burglary that was in progress at Mulligan's Bar, located inside the same building as the Greenview Restaurant, at 4:20 a.m. July 30.
After finishing up from another call in the Old Creek Road area off Mountain Meadow South, Fox and White heard the alarm sound from the Greenview, the association reported. The two men responded, with White pulling up to the front of the building while Fox drove around back.
According to the association report, Fox said he saw the broken back door and two men inside Mulligan’s waving a blowtorch back and forth across the floor. He later found out that the men had been cutting through the private ATM.
Fox signaled White that the break-in was in the rear and, at the same time, saw the two men drop the torch and quickly leave the building, running past the pro shop and toward the parking lot, the association reported.
Hidden Valley Lake officials said that as the two burglars rounded the corner of the building, one of them – Ramirez – ran into White, and seeing the sheriff’s drawn gun, quickly fell outstretched to the ground where he was handcuffed.
Vassiliou escaped running back across the golf course toward Spyglass Road.
Besides the bar's ATM and the back door, the Hidden Valley Lake Association reported that there was no other property damage as a result of the break-in at Mulligan's.
Ramirez remained in custody at the Lake County Jail on Saturday, with bail set at $70,000, according to jail records.
Meyers, whose bail had been set at $15,000, posted the required percentage and was released, jail records indicated.
Email Elizabeth Larson at