Tammy Moore returned to her Cobb, California, home of 15 years, where she and her ex-husband raised their daughter, and couldn’t believe the scene that lay before her.
Smoke drifted among the scorched remnants of her property, a blackened swing set and bicycle two of the most recognizable items among the ash and sooty debris. The vicious Valley Fire left little to salvage.
“Even though I expected it to be bad,” she told CNN, “I didn’t expect everything to be gone.”
As firefighters backed by bulldozers, helicopters and air tankers scramble to battle the massive Valley Fire, along with other fires around California — including the Rough and Butte fires, which are also running through tens of thousands of acres — powerful imagery has emerged, both from firefighters and civilians.
The photos and videos help tell the story of the blazes that have left at least 24,000 Californians displaced.
Protecting the Chicago Stump
According to National Geographic, the famed Chicago Stump in the Giant Sequoia National Monument, near Porterville, was once known as the General Noble Tree. It was cut down in 1892 for an exhibit the following year at the Chicago World’s Fair.
“It’s wrapped in fire-resistant material and has three sprinklers on it,” John Nichols, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman, told the magazine Monday, adding that it’s “in really good shape.”
‘This is what it’s like…’
Filmmaker Jeff Frost created a time-lapse video after driving through the Valley Fire in Middletown.
Not to be outdone
In Anderson Springs, about a 30-minute drive west of Middletown, a YouTube user going by mulletFive documented the fiery scenes on both sides of the road as she made an “escape” from town.
According to a GoFundMe page linked out from the video’s description, the YouTube user’s mother-in-law lives in the house, her grandfather built it, her husband grew up there and she and her husband were married by a creek on the property.
The family missed Saturday’s 4 p.m. evacuation order, leaving instead at 8:30 p.m. on the only road out of Anderson Springs toward Middletown. At the time, there was no sign of fire — no falling ash or smell of smoke or sirens in the distance — making this video all the more amazing.
Sigh of relief
Capt. Pat Ward, firefighter Niko Matteoli, firefighter Richard Reiff and firefighter Logan Pridmore — members of Cal Fire’s Copter 104 crew — suffered burns fighting the Valley Fire on Saturday afternoon. They were transported to an area burn center, according to Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant.
Cal Fire chiefs Ken Pimlott and Dave Teter visited the firefighters in the hospital Sunday and reported they were “in stable condition and good spirits.”
On Monday, Pimlott tweeted a photo of Reiff sitting up in bed, smiling and chatting with Gov. Jerry Brown.
Worth a thousand words
Snapshots show a portion of the destruction left in the Valley Fire’s wake.
And another thousand words
If it gutted cars and disappeared windshields, you can only imagine what the Valley Fire did to a plastic trash receptacle. Here’s a telling glimpse of how the wildfire devastated Middletown.
Fires in Oregon, too
While much of the attention has been rightly directed at California’s blazes, it’s wildfire season. Many states are dealing with giant blazes, including Oregon, where a bear added a little levity to the Eagle Complex fire that has burned almost 13,000 acres roughly 20 miles northwest of Richland.