There was damage.
My property is on Bachelor Valley Road a few miles north of Hwy 20 and several miles west up Upper Lake in Lake county.
Hell's Peak is just north-west off the upper property boundary. It has a 100-ft waterfall on my side of the peak that I probably mentioned long ago. I like to hike up there every so often.
Last year I was watching the fire go eastward behind Hell's Peak as I was talking on the phone to a friend located in Novato, and we were both monitoring the fire on live maps available on the internet, and we passed links back and forth containing fire progress data and maps. It looked like the fire would continue to Upper Lake and not turn south toward my property. Then I saw the fire hit the bottom side of a very high peak to the east of Hell's Peak. That other peak is another 1,000+ feet higher than Hell's peak and is forested over most of its surface. The fire climbed from the bottom of that mountain to its top in about 5-seconds.
Soon after that, three fire trucks rolled up to the house/barn area. We chatted for quite awhile. I decided to again check a studio I built about a quarter-mile north of the house. I wanted to see if the fire could jump over Cooper Creek (and hoped it couldn't), but as I drove up and over a small hill I could see the fire coming down that same road; so obviously Cooper did not slow it up. So I turned around and went back down to the hose, packed up some essentials and left the property. That was my first mistake, as I wasn't allowed back on the property for a couple weeks even though the fire was long gone. So I and my dog spent a few nights sleeping and living in of my Ford Ranger while we got food at a filling station off Hwy 20, then we eventually went to Novato and went back and forth between residences of an indirect relative and a long-time friend.
Damage? Totally burned out about 3,000-ft of half-inch drip line that provided water to a few hundred trees and bushes that I planted over a few years. Also destroyed or severely damaged a number of trees and bushes I had planted over the years, some of the trees being redwoods which were 12" tall when I planted them and were now 30-feet tall. Some of them will survive. Some of them are starting over, sending many sprouts up from their base. Some of them died merely because a firefighter trampled them or drove over them with his trucks.
The house, barn, studio, and barn were not damaged. Near the studio I have a pond with a wooden deck. The deck is gone, but the pond and its bass are fine. The power pole and meter and breaker box for the water pump for the house well totally burned out so I had no house and yard water. And the electric backup pump at the Ag well which also has a windmill could not be used because its control box burned up, and the sucker rod on the windmill burned so that well was totally useless. So, over the following two weeks I had PG&E install a new power pole for the well power; and I got permits and bought everything else and did all the work so that I wouldn't have to pay an electrician a ridiculous amount to get the house well up and running again.
Now I have a lot of extra firewood for my wood stove, but its surface is black as hell. You'd be surprised at how fine that black soot is and how it can pass through any fabric and stick to anything and everything, and how badly it smells for months and months. It's been over a year and I smell even now.
