LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Board of Supervisors last week officially declared a countywide emergency in response to the Wye and Walker fires, and the county’s state senator asked the governor for a similar declaration although the county may not qualify based on final damage estimates.
Supervisor Denise Rushing took the proposed emergency resolution to the board at its meeting last Tuesday. The resolution was approved 5-0.
The fires – the causes of which still haven’t been released by Cal Fire – began Sunday, Aug. 12, along Highway 20.
Managed as one incident, the fires burned 7,934 acres over a one-week period, destroying three structures and damaging two others before being fully contained on Saturday, Aug. 18.
Spring Valley and the Wilbur Hot Springs areas were evacuated, and Highway 20 was temporarily closed because of the incident.
The total cost to fight the fires was above $7.3 million, with more than 1,200 firefighters on scene at one point, according to Cal Fire.
The day after the board passed the resolution, State Sen. Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown in which she joined the board in asking for a disaster declaration for Lake County because of the fires.
However, the county may not qualify for assistance.
Rushing told the board that the county’s damage may not reach the statewide threshold for getting increased assistance from the state, an issue that Lake County Fire Protection District Chief Willie Sapeta – who also works in the county’s Office of Emergency Services – brought up at a community meeting last week on the Wye Fire.
“I knew that we weren’t near the threshold for that,” Sapeta told Lake County News on Monday.
Sapeta said that he’s still tallying the county’s damages, and doesn’t yet have values from Pacific Gas & Electric and other utilities, or Caltrans.
“There’s still a lot of data that I haven’t received yet,” he said.
He said the disaster assistance for which the county would be eligible is determined by an equation, not a dollar amount, and without all of the needed information that equation hasn’t been fully calculated.
However, he said Lake County was fortunate in not losing a lot of farming operations or homes, and only had a brief 24- to 36-hour interruption of infrastructure, primarily the Highway 20 closure east of Highway 53.
Because there have been several big fires around Northern California – including the North Pass Fires in Mendocino County and the Ponderosa in Tehama and Shasta counties, which has destroyed more than 60 homes – Sapeta said Gov. Brown could make a regional declaration naming eligible counties, including Lake.
If, however, the county has a wet winter and suffers erosion and slides in the fire area, Sapeta said that could be added to the fire damage totals, and could qualify the county for state assistance.
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