It all started with a dry lightning storm over much of northern California in the night and early morning of the Summer Solstice, 2008, after several years of drought.

Thousands of lightning strikes started hundreds of fires all over northern California. In addition to the 131 "official" fires here in Mendocino County, there were dozens more that were quickly surpressed by people nearby so the fire departments never got involved. One such fire started in the vicinity of a local Fire Safe Council meeting... it was put out in short order!

Our county’s firefighters and local residents were on their own, without even air support, with the fires until June 25th, because larger fires elsewhere were threatening more highly-populated areas. Firefighters were already battling major fires in Butte, Santa Cruz, and Monterey Counties with dozens of homes burned and hundreds more threatened.

Despite all of this, Mendocino County was fortunate. Our major population centers were all spared although state parks, outbuildings, barns, peoples' yards, and millions of dollars of commercial timber, went up in smoke. It is remarkable that amidst all of these fires, only one home was lost – struck by lightning that first night.  Our hearts go out to the couple who lived there.