Wildfire 2008
The Mendocino Lightning Complex was a series of 129 wildfires started by an electrical storm that moved through the area in mid-June of 2008. Nearly two thousand firefighters were brought in from across the state and nation to battle the various blazes that eventually consumed over 50,000 acres.
Locally, the smoke was thick as fog and smelled like a campfire. For six weeks it was hot and smokey; it felt like armageddon. There was so much smoke generated, it reached as far as Colorado.
The incident was officially contained on July 19 and the last of the smoke finally cleared the valley in early August.
The first four pictures, below, were taken in the day without a cloud in the sky. The glowing orange-red bulb is the Sun.
In August we went to Montgomery Woods to see the extent of the damage. The Woods is a relatively unknown and small redwood grove that has one of the tallest trees in the world in it. None of the trees is marked in any way, so there are very few who know which trees are the biggest.
On our visit, the park was largely taped off to prevent foot traffic that might cause unnatural erosion when the rain comes. The trees did not appear to be damaged badly. The fire itself looks like it moved along the floor and burned everything below 4 feet like a barbeque. Vegetation and Bushes between four and 10 feet tall were intact, but completely cooked-through and/or dehydrated.
But the news was not all bad. You can see that there were whole areas that were not touched at all. And in the areas that were completely burned, life has already returned.
