Two homes were confirmed destroyed in the Glenhaven Fire and some evacuation warnings remained in place as hot weather persisted into Saturday night.|
MARISA ENDICOTT
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
At the top of a long winding road up the hillside from Highway 20 in Clearlake Oaks, the smoldering remains of a home are set against a sweeping view of Clear Lake and Mount Konocti behind it.
What was once a home with a big wrapping deck is now just rebar and foundation, a twisted bedframe, burned-out barbecue and other appliances sticking out of the rubble — a casualty of the Glenhaven Fire that started Friday in the hills off Harvey Boulevard in Lake County’s Glenhaven and spread east.
“It’s crazy to see it like this,” said District 3 County Supervisor Eddie Crandell, who’d once taken campaign pictures on the deck. He was there now to help collect the seven dogs penned nearby.
Midday, fire crews continued to work the area putting out hot spots. They’d already dumped a whole load of water on the property, said Chase Weirshauser with Cal Fire out of Kelsey-Cobb. With the wind and steep slope, “there wasn’t a whole lot that could have been done” to save the house “without putting (crews) in danger.”
But while that home was lost, many were spared, in large part thanks to heavy ground and air resources, said Cal Fire spokesperson Jason Clay. Cal Fire assigned 315 personnel, 30 engines, 7 dozers, 15 water tenders and 20 crews to the blaze.
“The crews did amazing when you look at the potential here,” Lake County Fire District Chief William Sapeta said. Defensible space around many of the at-risk properties helped, too.
The fire spread quickly Friday afternoon threatening over 2,500 structures and forcing evacuation orders for more than 3,000 people in the communities of Glenhaven, Clearlake Oaks and Clearlake Keys. Highway 20 was also temporarily closed.
Engines, hand crews and dozers worked through the night, while helicopters dropped water from above. Forward progress was stopped just before 10 pm Friday; by Saturday afternoon, the fire was holding steady at 417 acres and 20% containment. Some evacuation orders and warnings were downgraded; others remained in place.
Only two structures, both single-family homes, were confirmed destroyed, although Clay said damage inspection was ongoing Saturday. Rows and rows of vineyard burned, too, though others were saved.
Edward Rivas-Duke surveyed the damage for a friend and neighbor who’d also lost property. The ridgetop home in Clearlake Oaks still stood but the windows were blown out and most everything inside destroyed. Rivas-Duke had been in Lakeport running errands when he got a call that his own house was at risk. “My spouse packed a few things and grabbed the cat and got out,” he said, adding situations like these prompted them to build their home out of metal.
Closer to town, 81-year-old Clearlake Oaks resident Linda Marcello watched the fire come right up to her back door. “That’s as close as I ever want to get,” she said. It was her first California wildfire experience, “and I don’t want another.”
Watching the fire approach from the backyard, “I started to cry,” Marcello said, “not from fear but immense sadness” for lost wildlife and land. She decided not to evacuate when the Sheriff’s Office came knocking. She couldn’t abandon the house her son had bought for her.
“For a bartender to buy his aging mother a house, that’s not easy” she said. “Stuff can be replaced, but the four walls and the roof, that’s my son.” He’d driven up with his fiance from San Francisco the night before in a panic and was staying with her now.
Marcello credits the retardant, hot pink signs of which are everywhere in the hills, with saving her property. “That retardant saved so much,” she said.
It was a close call for Kristy Robertson, too, who was working at Buddy’s Coffeehouse in Clearlake Oaks on Saturday morning.
When she heard her place near Glenhaven was in the fire’s pathway Friday, Robertson rushed out of the coffee shop. “I hauled ass home,” she said, and with some friends, spent the next two hours watering down the property. Evacuation wasn’t an option because of all the animals on site — geese, ducks, chickens, as well as two dogs and cats. “I was afraid to leave in case I couldn’t go back,” she said. Last time she was forced to evacuate, she couldn’t return for three days.
For those who did clear out, a shelter was set up at Middletown’s Twin Pine Casino & Hotel. A dozen or so people had stayed through the night and most were clearing out as dawn broke Saturday morning.
Odelia Cashin left the shelter around 7 a.m. wrapped in an American Red Cross blanket. She’d evacuated without a jacket the day before and was feeling the early morning chill. She said she and others from Eskaton, a senior affordable housing complex in Clearlake Oaks, made up many of the overnight evacuees.
“It’s a terrible way to live,” Cashin said of fire after fire that’s hit Lake County this year. Still, she wasn’t too phased, noting she came from hurricane territory. “I come from water to fire,” she laughed. Cashin moved to California after Hurricane Katrina. “I’m used to mother nature.” At the shelter, she’d also gotten to know someone who lived next door in her building for the first time. “I had to come 40 miles to meet my neighbor,” she said.
Firefighters are expected to continue working on the fire for the next several days, and Clay warned people to stay vigilant given persistent hot weather conditions, Clearlake Oaks residents seemed at ease if also relieved Saturday. They traded “what a night” and “glad you made it through” at cash registers. “Don’t you strike any matches,” Marcello told a couple passersby.
“It is what it is,” said Bill McIntyre who works at Oak’s Red & White Store and has seen much of the county burn in his two-decades-plus living in the area. When the power went out Friday, they’d turned on the grocery store’s generator and watched the fire from the parking lot.
You can reach Marisa Endicott at 707-521-5470 or marisa.endicott@pressdemocrat.com. On X (formerly Twitter) @InYourCornerTPD and Facebook @InYourCornerTPD.
