MIDDLETOWN, Lake County — County officials arrested a Clearlake man Monday on 17 counts of arson related to numerous fires — including the raging 4,000-acre Clayton Fire that has so far claimed 175 buildings and displaced hundreds of people.
County Sheriff Brian Martin and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Chief Ken Pimlott announced the arrest of Damin Pashilk, 40, at a community meeting of about 200 people at a casino doubling as a Red Cross shelter south of the blaze.
People screamed as they heard that the fire that is causing so much heartache may have been deliberately set.
“Hang him!” some yelled. “You’re going to hell!”
“All 17 counts resulted from a very extensive investigation of numerous fire starts over the last year,” Pimlott told the crowd, but he offered no specifics about which previous fires have been linked to Pashilk.
The Clayton Fire started Saturday about 100 miles north of San Francisco, and by Monday night the blaze was 5 percent contained.
Pashilk is accused of setting the wildfire on Clayton Creek Road off Highway 29. But Pimlott, the state fire chief, said he had “no information” about whether he worked alone.
Firefighters thought they were beginning to get a handle on the blaze Saturday, but it picked up speed overnight and into Sunday, eventually roaring through Lower Lake. It was only when embers began to cool Monday that the devastation became clear.
Entire blocks of homes in Lower Lake, a community of 1,300, were leveled. A small winery, auto shop and real estate office were gone. The high school, which was supposed to open for class this week, was still intact, but its sports fields were singed and dozens of surrounding houses had burned. School was canceled for the foreseeable future.
Thousands remained under evacuation orders, many not knowing the fate of their property.
It’s a sadly familiar story. Rural Lake County, which neighbors more affluent Napa and Sonoma, has become the unfortunate prey of California’s increasingly destructive wildfire seasons. The Clayton Fire is only the latest of several infernos in the county over the past year, including the Valley Fire, which killed four people and destroyed more than 1,300 homes. That fire started with a faulty electrical wire.
A Habitat for Humanity office in Lower Lake, which was helping rebuild the county after last summer’s fire toll, was also lost.
“Just in the last few years, this is unbelievable what’s happened here,” said Marc Giberson, 63, who lives on the outskirts and had tried to secure his belongings in a warehouse downtown when the Clayton Fire approached, only to see his storage building go up in smoke.
The fire destroyed a huge collection of historic memorabilia that Giberson was hoping to donate to the Lower Lake Schoolhouse Museum, for which he serves as a board member. He also lost a mini modified race car and four vintage cars, including a 1923 Studebaker, which was used as a parade car in the 150th anniversary celebration of Lake County.
“I’m just trying to keep it together now,” he said near tears, as he stood in front of a pile of rubble and the remnants of his pickup truck, just off Main Street. “When I think about everything that was in there, it’s a shocker.”
Giberson also lost his second home downtown, which dated to the community’s origins in the 1800s.
On Monday afternoon, firefighters were watering down the smoldering buildings of Lower Lake, which were sending a thick, dark haze over the community. The shells of cars remained in driveways. Downed power lines littered the streets.
Crews were also fortifying their positions north of town, to make sure the fire wouldn’t spread to the more populated community of Clearlake. Already, the St. Helena Hospital there had been evacuated as a precaution.
A residential area between the two towns known as “the Avenues” appeared OK.
“It’s still an active fire,” said Lt. Doug Pittman, a Marin County sheriff’s spokesman working on behalf of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, or Cal Fire. “Any one of these embers could reignite.”
The blaze had already taken firefighters by surprise once.
Within hours of its start late Saturday afternoon, Cal Fire officials reported that the fire was 20 percent contained as six air tankers and 200 ground personnel quickly surrounded the oak-studded ridge where it was burning a few miles south of Lower Lake along Highway 29.
But as crews closed in on the fire overnight and into Sunday, the blaze got hotter and more energetic. By the afternoon, local winds began pushing flames toward firefighters, and embers started flying over their heads.
“At that point there was a flare-up with the heat, lack of humidity and increase in winds,” explained Paul Lowenthal, an assistant fire marshal for the Santa Rosa Fire Department who is now aiding Cal Fire.
The runaway embers were soon landing on private parcels in the hills around Lower Lake and homes began to burn — more than the initial four destroyed shortly after the fire’s 5 p.m. start Saturday. Cal Fire has since downgraded its containment estimates.
The fire’s unexpected turn and its mind-blowing pace was also tied to the tinder-dry hillsides, suffering from five years of drought, and the hot- and quick-burning brush that even generated its own weather.
“It was pretty hot Sunday, but not exceptional. But the fire was exceptional,” said Daniel Swain, a climate researcher at Stanford University. “If you have really strong temperature differences over a short distance, you can generate winds. That can cause conditions locally to be very different.”
The plume of smoke from big fires also plays a role, Swain noted. The columns essentially become a cloud of not just soot and particles but also water vapor, stirring up more weather extremes.
With its own inertia, the Clayton Fire rolled into Lower Lake from the east, demolishing dozens of homes before sweeping into the historic downtown — even as firefighters converged on the community and went building to building trying to halt the fire’s advance.
On Sunday, “the fire was calm, and in 10 minutes, we were running,” said resident Bobby Henderson, 46, who lives off Bonham Road and fled with his wife and three daughters.
The fire burned several businesses along Main Street. Fortunately, most of the downtown remains standing.
“When I saw the fire coming over the ridge, I knew we didn’t have a chance,” said David Barreda, who lost his house in the hills south of Lower Lake and headed into town for safety.
He and his family spent the night at their feed store downtown, but again Sunday they were forced to leave. They’re staying in a family trailer along Clear Lake, to the north.
“We’re just doing what we got to do,” Barreda said.
On Monday afternoon, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for Lake County, a move that expedites assistance for firefighters, aid workers and those who suffered losses.
Many county residents are still recovering from last year’s wildfires. In addition to the toll of the Valley Fire, the Rocky Fire and Jerusalem Fire destroyed more than 50 homes. Their causes are still under investigation.
Pashilk was in the news in 2009 when police knocked on the door of a Napa home and a man identified as Pashilk opened it holding a loaded handgun. Pashilk, who was wanted for parole violations, was placed under arrest.
More recently, in 2013, a cover photo on Pashilk’s Facebook page shows a pair of lightning bolt neo-Nazi symbols associated with white supremacy.
Evan Sernoffsky, Peter Fimrite and Kurtis Alexander are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email:[email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Twitter:@EvanSernoffsky,@pfimrite @kurtisalexander
