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LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport’s fire chief is asking community members to use extra caution after two small vegetation fires this past week were sparked by fireplace or woodstove ashes.

The fires occurred on Monday afternoon in the 1500 block of McMahon Road and Thursday night in the 1000 block of Crystal Lake Way.

In the case of the McMahon Road fire, neighbors were getting it under control by the time firefighters arrived, according to radio traffic.

Firefighters got on scene of the Crystal Lake Way fire on Thursday and found it burning with a slow rate of spread, but were able to knock it down quickly, according to Lakeport Fire Chief Doug Hutchison.

In both cases, Hutchison said the case was ashes that had been dumped.

“Both of these had real potential. We got really lucky,” he said of the fires.

Hutchison asked community members to be cognizant of the very high level of fire danger that still exists this late in the year.

While it’s cold, and people want to use their wood stoves and fireplaces, Hutchison said it’s still dry enough that ashes can cause a fire.

He said it’s important to make sure ashes are completely out and cold before dumping them.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
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Kepler’s astounding success in proving there are more planets than stars in our galaxy, and the existence of many worlds that could be favorable to life has forever changed our perspective.

Many members of the Kepler team and scientists offered thoughts on what this mission, and its finding of “more planets than stars,” has meant to them.

On Thursday evening, NASA’s Kepler space telescope received its final set of commands to disconnect communications with Earth.

The “goodnight” commands finalize the spacecraft’s transition into retirement, which began on Oct. 30 with NASA’s announcement that Kepler had run out of fuel and could no longer conduct science.

Coincidentally, Kepler’s “goodnight” coincides with the anniversary of the death of its namesake, German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion and died 388 years ago on Nov. 15, 1630.

The final commands were sent over NASA’s Deep Space Network from Kepler’s operations center at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP, at the University of Colorado in Boulder. LASP runs the spacecraft’s operations on behalf of NASA and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado.

Kepler’s team disabled the safety modes that could inadvertently turn systems back on, and severed communications by shutting down the transmitters.

Because the spacecraft is slowly spinning, the Kepler team had to carefully time the commands so that instructions would reach the spacecraft during periods of viable communication.

The team will monitor the spacecraft to ensure that the commands were successful. The spacecraft is now drifting in a safe orbit around the Sun 94 million miles away from Earth.

The data Kepler collected over the course of more than nine years in operation will be mined for exciting discoveries for many years to come.

NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from LASP.
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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Air Quality Management District has issued another alert due to unhealthy conditions resulting from the Camp fire in Butte County.

The district said air quality conditions are in the “unhealthy for sensitive individuals” to “unhealthy” range for Lake County.

The overnight forecast indicates a potential for settling of smoke into the basin. In areas that become impacted by smoke “unhealthy” or “hazardous” air quality may be experienced, according to Air Pollution Control Officer Doug Gearhart.

Gearhart said the “unhealthy” air quality forecast results from fine particulates in the smoke and the possibility of increased ground level ozone. These are generated when combustion products in the smoke combine with the high temperatures, sunlight and humidity. Other chemical reactions reduce visibility by forming secondary particulates.

Weather forecasts do not show significant improvement through the weekend, but conditions should start to improve through the day Monday, with “good” to “moderate” air quality expected to return to Lake County on Tuesday and continue through Thanksgiving, Gearhart reported.

While improving conditions are expected, Gearhart said all county residents should still be prepared for periodic smoke impacts throughout the region until the Camp fire is out.
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Short-wave infrared (red) captured by Landsat 8 shows the full extent of the actively burning area of the Camp fire four hours after it started on Nov. 8. The red patches are fires that leapfrogged in front of the primary burn front, which was growing at a rate of approximately 5 km per hour. Earth Engine image by Jeff Chambers.


BERKELEY, Calif. – Satellite images of the area around Paradise, Calif., on the morning of Nov. 8 captured the Camp fire when it was only four hours old, yet had already burned halfway through the city.

Overlaid with earlier high-resolution images of the city’s buildings and surrounding landscape, the images clearly indicate the buildings that had likely burned by 10:45 a.m. that Thursday, as well as the rapidly leapfrogging flames and the path of destruction the fire had created since its ignition at around 6:30 a.m.

The northeastern, upwind edge of the burn lies beneath and parallel to three high-tension power lines running along Highway 70, about a mile and a half northeast of a town called Pulga and a site identified as a possible origin of the fire.

So far, the Camp fire has scorched 149,000 acres, left dozens of people dead and destroyed more than 12,786 structures – including 9,700 single-family residences – making it the most destructive fire in California history. It was 55-percent contained as of Saturday night.

The images were generated by Jeff Chambers, a UC Berkeley professor of geography, using Google’s Earth Engine, which combines an analysis platform and detailed base maps with large storage and daily downloads of publicly available Earth-imaging data from orbiting satellites.

The Landsat 8 satellite happened to snap its once-every-16-days shot of that area at 10:45 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 8.

The satellite recorded visible and infrared wavelengths. Short-wavelength infrared, or SWIR, light (1.2- to 3-micron wavelength) is captured in two bands with Landsat 8, and these SWIR wavelengths are emitted by burning materials and penetrate smoke and aerosols, allowing a detailed picture of the fire’s progress.

As assembled by Chambers, the infrared signature of fire is an eerie red wash over Earth Engine’s base map of homes and businesses in Paradise.

“It’s astonishing,” Chambers said. “You can see the fire burning right through the city. The burn front at 10:45 a.m. on Thursday morning was that far into the city. Earth Engine tools allow this type of rapid analysis, and I think it’s important to get this out there to the public right away.”

Chambers used the satellite data to clock the fire’s speed at about 5 kilometers (3 miles) per hour during its first four hours, driven in part by flying embers that caused the fire to leapfrog up to 4 kilometers, or 2.5 miles, ahead of the advancing fire front.

“People need to understand how quickly these fires can propagate. Early warning is so critical here,” he said.

Chambers is a field ecologist and biogeographer who uses remote sensing to augment his ground studies of how areas are impacted and recover after hurricanes, droughts, fires and other natural disasters. Earlier this year, he published results of rapid mapping of the damage to Puerto Rico’s forests caused by 2017’s Hurricane Maria, and a publication for peer review is nearing completion on that work.

On Saturday, Nov. 10, Chambers pulled up Landsat data from 10:45 a.m. Nov. 8, and manipulated it to see what could be learned. Such information, if it had been available immediately after the satellite obtained the images and been updated frequently, might have been invaluable to firefighters.

“You can see the way in which the structure of the burn is aligned with the built environment,” he said. “At 10:45 in the morning, all these structures were engulfed in flames. You can see that clearly in the image and start counting the hundreds of homes burned.”

Chambers emphasized that the Camp fire is not a forest fire, but a wildland fire made dangerous by its proximity to dense human habitation.

“The vegetation of the ignition area if not a forested region, it's a complex mosaic of grasses, shrubs and forest patches, with downed and dead woody debris and urban structures,” he said.

Chambers plans within a few weeks to build a user interface that can interact with his Earth Engine code, allowing anyone to manipulate the images and zoom in on areas of interest.

Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
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Jacob Lee St. Clair, 38, of San Francisco, Calif., was arrested in Lake County, Calif. He’s wanted in San Mateo, County, Calif., on numerous warrants for felony child abuse. Lake County Jail photo.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – This week a California Highway Patrol officer took into custody a San Francisco man wanted in San Mateo County for felony child abuse.

Jacob Lee St. Clair, 38, was arrested following a vehicle pursuit late Monday night, according to a report from the CHP’s Clear Lake Area Office.

The CHP said that at 11:26 p.m. Monday Officer Mike Phillips was patrolling the area of Highway 29 north of Highland Springs Road in Lakeport.

Phillips observed a blue Toyota Corolla travelling southbound on Highway 29 at a high rate of speed and initiated a traffic stop. However, the CHP said the Toyota fled, traveling southbound on Highway 29 and rapidly accelerating to speeds up to 120 miles per hour.

The suspect vehicle began crossing over double yellow lines and passing vehicles, and in the interest of public safety, the pursuit was terminated, the CHP said.

The CHP said the suspect vehicle was located a short time later, abandoned in the intersection of Belle Avenue and Lucky Drive.

With the assistance of local residents and the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Phillips found the suspect – identified as St. Clair – hiding in a carport and apprehended him, the CHP said.

A warrants check revealed that St. Clair had multiple outstanding warrants totaling $300,000 out of San Mateo County on charges of felony child abuse involving a 5-year-old, according to the CHP.

The CHP said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaff was contacted on Friday and said he was very pleased that St. Clair was apprehended so justice can be rendered.

St. Clair was booked into the Lake County Jail for multiple violations including felony evasion of a peace officer and drug possession along with his warrants, the CHP said.

On Friday night St. Clair remained in the Lake County Jail.
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An international team of researchers, including a NASA glaciologist, has discovered a large meteorite impact crater hiding beneath more than a half-mile of ice in northwest Greenland.

The crater – the first of any size found under the Greenland ice sheet – is one of the 25 largest impact craters on Earth, measuring roughly 1,000 feet deep and more than 19 miles in diameter, an area slightly larger than that inside Washington’s Capital Beltway.

The group, led by researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark worked for the past three years to verify their discovery, which they initially made in 2015 using NASA data. Their finding is published in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Science Advances.

"NASA makes the data it collects freely available to scientists and the public all around the world,” said Joe MacGregor, a NASA glaciologist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who became involved in the investigation in its early stages. “That set the stage for our Danish colleagues’ ‘Eureka’ moment."

The researchers first spotted the crater in July 2015, while they were inspecting a new map of the topography beneath Greenland's ice sheet that used ice-penetrating radar data primarily from NASA’s Operation IceBridge — a multi-year airborne mission to track changes in polar ice — and earlier NASA airborne missions in Greenland.

The scientists noticed an enormous, previously unexamined circular depression under Hiawatha Glacier, sitting at the very edge of the ice sheet in northwestern Greenland.

Using satellite imagery from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, MacGregor also examined the surface of the ice in the Hiawatha Glacier region and quickly found evidence of a circular pattern on the ice surface that matched the one observed in the bed topography map.

To confirm their suspicions, in May 2016 the team sent a research plane from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute to fly over the Hiawatha Glacier and map the crater and the overlying ice with a state-of-the-art ice-penetrating radar provided by the University of Kansas. MacGregor, who is an expert in radar measurements of ice, helped design the airborne survey.

"Previous radar measurements of Hiawatha Glacier were part of a long-term NASA effort to map Greenland’s changing ice cover," MacGregor said. "What we really needed to test our hypothesis was a dense and focused radar survey there. The survey exceeded all expectations and imaged the depression in stunning detail: a distinctly circular rim, central uplift, disturbed and undisturbed ice layering, and basal debris — it’s all there."

The crater formed less than 3 million years ago, according to the study, when an iron meteorite more than half a mile wide smashed into northwest Greenland. The resulting depression was subsequently covered by ice.

"The crater is exceptionally well-preserved and that is surprising because glacier ice is an incredibly efficient erosive agent that would have quickly removed traces of the impact," said Kurt Kjær, a professor at the Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark and lead author of the study.

Kjær said that the crater’s condition indicates the impact might even have occurred toward the end of the last ice age, which would place the resulting crater among the youngest on the planet.

In the summers of 2016 and 2017, the research team returned to the Hiawatha Glacier to map tectonic structures in the rock near the foot of the glacier and collect samples of sediments washed out from the depression through a meltwater channel.

"Some of the quartz sand coming from the crater had planar deformation features indicative of a violent impact; this is conclusive evidence that the depression beneath the Hiawatha Glacier is a meteorite crater," said associate professor Nicolaj Larsen of Aarhus University in Denmark, one of the authors of the study..

Earlier studies have shown large impacts can profoundly affect Earth’s climate, with major consequences for life on Earth at the time. The researchers plan to continue their work in this area, addressing remaining questions on when and how the meteorite impact at Hiawatha Glacier affected the planet.

For more on NASA’s Earth science activities, visit https://www.nasa.gov/earth.

The Hiawatha impact crater is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, which flows just beyond the crater rim, forming a semi-circular edge. Part of this edge (top of photo) and a tongue of ice that breaches the crater’s rim are shown in this photo taken during a NASA Operation IceBridge flight on April 17. Credits: NASA/John Sonntag.
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Harper’s Weekley’s “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner,” from November 1869, by Thomas Nast. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

It should come as no surprise that Thanksgiving – the holiday during which millions of American families gorge themselves on Turkey, pies and stuffing – has become warped from its original design.

Let’s take a brief look at the history of thanksgiving days in European and American North America.

1514: Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his men conduct a service of thanksgiving for the abundant food and water they find along the Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle.

1564: French Huguenot colonists settle in the area of Jacksonville, Florida and sing “a psalm of Thanksgiving unto God.”

1607: When Jamestown colonists arrive in Virginia, they immediately erect a wooden cross and give thanks to God for their safe passage across the ocean.

1619: English colonists at Berkeley Hundred in Virginia decree that the day of their arrival, December 4, “shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

1621: The Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts, hold a feast to celebrate the harvest and God’s bounty.

1777: During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress designates December 18 of that year a day “for solemn Thanksgiving and praise” for the Patriot army’s victory at Saratoga. This is the first national American day of thanksgiving.

1789: President George Washington proclaims November 26 to be a day for “rendering unto [God] our sincere and humble thanks – for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation – for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war – for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed – for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted – for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us…”

1863: President Abraham Lincoln gives an official proclamation setting the last Thursday of November a National Day of Thanksgiving. The President says, in part,

“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity [sic] and Union.”

Up to this point, Thanksgiving Day, whenever it landed, served as a time to take stock of one’s blessings. These days often occurred at the end, or in the middle of, great hardships – from dangerous crossings of vast oceans and a reprieve from starvation brought about by a good harvest, to the fighting for one’s independence and steadfastly enduring the ravages of a civil war.

In moments like these, when human will was pitted against the many and diverse pains of this world and all seemed lost, time was set aside to recognize the small blessings – to be grateful to be alive and to have the chance to continue to fight whatever great struggle you currently found yourself in.

Nationalist agendas and corporate greed gradually ate away at the spirit of such a holiday. Beginning in the 1890s, the imagery of Thanksgiving became increasingly focused on the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians, which was used as a way of teaching children into what good citizenship looked like.

Never before was the holiday so heavily associated with the Pilgrims – after all, their “thanksgiving” day had only been one among many observed over the centuries. There wasn’t anything special about it. In fact, only by a great stretch of the imagination could it be considered the first American Thanksgiving. That honor should instead belong to the Thanksgiving of 1777 or 1789.

The holiday was further corrupted in 1941 when, at the behest of President Franklin Roosevelt, Congress pushed Thanksgiving back, from the last to the fourth Thursday of November. By then, the holiday had become heavily commercialized, and President Roosevelt wanted more time between Thanksgiving and Christmas so that people would purchase more goods and boost the depressed economy.

A holiday based on humble gratitude had become a tool to indoctrinate children and a chance to boost the economy. It’s continued much the same to this day. In fact, with Black Friday starting before Thanksgiving dessert is even served, the day has become an even greater boost to the economy than Roosevelt could ever had imagined.

So as you sit down with your family on the fourth Thursday of November, try to forget Thanksgiving altogether and in its place remember what it means to give thanks.

Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.
Puck’s 1907 Thanksgiving cartoon. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
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William Kenneth Pimentel, 26, of Lucerne, Calif., was arrested on Friday, November 16, 2018, for numerous charges, including vehicle theft and unlawfully taking a fox. Lake County Jail photo.

LUCERNE, Calif. – The California Highway Patrol arrested a Lucerne man Friday after he was found in possession of a stolen county of Lake pickup, stolen bank cards and a dead fox.

William Kenneth Pimentel, 26, was taken into custody on Friday morning, according to the CHP’s Clear Lake Area Office.

Just after 8:15 a.m. Friday a concerned citizen called the CHP’s Ukiah Communications Center to report he observed a possible stolen county of Lake vehicle on Highway 20 at Pomo Pumps in Nice, traveling eastbound, the CHP reported.

The CHP said Officer C. Ogburn responded to search the area and, less than an hour after the initial call, located a pickup matching the description of the stolen vehicle parked unoccupied in a vacant lot on Frontage Road, west of Rancho Vista Drive in Lucerne.

The pickup had a license plate from another vehicle attached to the rear. The CHP said Officer Ogburn ran the vehicle identification number located inside the driver's door and the vehicle returned to a stolen vehicle belonging to the county of Lake.

The CHP said Officer Ogburn observed a male briskly walking away from the scene, heading eastbound from the area near the shore of Clear Lake, who then began going through backyards.

Officer Ogburn went to the adjacent side of the houses, locating and detaining the man – who later was identified as Pimentel – without incident, the CHP said.

The stolen pickup had fresh white spray paint over the county of Lake emblems on the doors. The CHP said Pimentel also had fresh white paint on his fingertips.

The CHP also found recently stolen bank cards within the vehicle which had been used to withdraw a large sum of money the same morning. When the CHP did an inventory of the pickup, cards and a booklet with Pimentel's name were discovered within it.

The officer also found a dead fox within the bed of the truck which is illegal to possess, the CHP said.

Pimentel was subsequently arrested and booked at Lake County Jail, where he remained in custody on Friday night.

Pimentel was arrested at the end of July when he was found in Nice, which at that point was under mandatory evacuation due to the Mendocino Complex, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

When authorities located him, he was dressed in dark clothing and wearing a backpack that contained bolt cutters, flashlight and rope.

At that time Pimentel was arrested and booked into custody for being an unauthorized person in an evacuation area, possession of burglary tools, and a violation of probation.

On this most recent case, Pimentel is tentatively scheduled to appear in Lake County Superior Court for arraignment on Monday, according to booking records.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
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KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – Supervisor Rob Brown explained a plan to reduce fire danger in four homeowners associations at a community meeting in Kelseyville on Wednesday night.

At least 200 people attended the standing-room-only meeting at Riviera Elementary School.

During the meeting, which ran just under an hour and a half, Brown explained the idea behind the plan, which he’s been working on since June, and fielded a number of questions from area residents.

Brown’s plan focuses on four communities which he said have the highest fire risk: Buckingham, Clear Lake Riviera, Riviera Heights and Riviera West. Brown’s district includes all of those areas except for Riviera Heights, which is in the supervisorial district of Tina Scott, who also was on hand for the meeting.

He’s proposing a risk management zone or county service area zone of benefit, as enabled by California Government Code Section 25210, for the purpose of removing brush and other wildfire fuel sources from private property.

The benefit zone would need to be separately approved in the homeowners associations of each of those four communities.

He showed a map of the area’s fire history, noting the biggest fires were from 1949 to 1961.

“They were huge fires. They did a lot of damage to the wildland, but there were no homes back there then,” other than a few farmers and people living on the lake, Brown said, explaining that much of the development in the Rivieras and Buckingham came in the 1970s and later. He said the 1949 fire burned in an area that today is in the Rivieras footprint.

Now, Brown estimated there is 69 years of fuel load in the area, and it’s much heavier than it was in the 1940s.

“It’s gonna burn again. And what we have to do is try to minimize that fuel load,” and do what is possible to make sure the area doesn’t experience another disaster like those that already have happened in Lake County or what Paradise is undergoing, he said.

“I don’t think I’m overdramatizing the possibility, that we have a fire here in the Rivieras, given the roads and the access and different situations that we have here, people will die. That’s the thing that really – it literally keeps me up at night, wondering what’s going to happen,” Brown said, explaining that he had predicted there would a a serious fire there because of the fuel load.

Brown said there are approximately 5,000 lots in the four communities that would be included in the zone. The breakdown is 2,776 in the Clear Lake Riviera, 480 in Riviera West, 639 in Riviera Heights, 600 in Buckingham and 505 peripheral lots.

The basic idea is that property owners will pay a one-time assessment based on size: $100 per lot for properties of less than one acre, $200 for lots from one to five acres, and $300 for lots of five acres or more, Brown said.

It’s anticipated that the one-time assessment would raise $500,000, which would pay for lot abatement. Brown said liens would then be placed on the properties to recover the funds. Those funds will not go to the fire department.

In addition, Brown said the money could be used as the necessary match for state grants, which could add millions more dollars to the effort.

The program will be run through the Lake County Community Development Department, he said.

Priority lots will be determined by an assessment committee that includes Cal Fire, Kelseyville Fire, homeowners association staff and county representatives, he said.

Abatement letters will be sent to the violating property owners, who will have 45 days to cleanup the lots, Brown said. If they don’t, it will be done for them and then a lien will be placed on the property; that lien will go on their tax bill. The lien, when repaid, will go back into the benefit zone fund.

As to the election process, Brown said ballots would go out to the property owners. If a person owns multiple lots, they get multiple votes.

Brown said the county is aiming to send out the ballots during the week of Jan. 9.

There will be 45 days for property owners to return their ballots. The Board of Supervisors will hold a protest hearing on the first Tuesday after that 45 days is up. The board can then accept the results and go to work in the spring, Brown said.

Brown said the abatement letters would go out 30 days from the middle of February. By March, the lots are either cleaned up or the county’s hired contracts go to work.

By that time, they won’t yet have the assessment money – the assessment bills will go out with the property tax bills in December 2019 – but Brown said he has assurances from County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson that she would recommended fronting some money to begin the work, which would later be reimbursed.

“We’d tried to have those done before fire season,” Brown said of the lots prioritized for cleanup.

He added, “It’s going to take awhile to get all this done, but we have to start somewhere.”

Brown said the county wouldn’t guarantee there will never be another fire. However, the reality is, with the fuel load there is now, another fire would be a disaster.

Brown’s presentation on the plan lasted about 20 minutes. For more than an hour, he responded to numerous questions about the proposal, as well as other issues.

One matter that came up was control burning. Brown said this year alone there were 2,200 burn permits being handled for the county. He said control burns aren’t necessarily the answer, explaining his own burn several years ago that ended up destroying a neighbor’s garage.

On Thursday, Brown told Lake County News that he has received an enormous amount of interest for his proposal.

“It’s been very positive,” he said.

He said he’s also received a very good suggestion about including areas all the way around Soda Bay.

“We can connect the dots later,” he said.

Anyone wanting to speak to Brown about the plan is invited to call him at 707-349-2628.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

111418 Fire Mitigation Community meeting presentation by LakeCoNews on Scribd

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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control’s kennels have filled up once again with many different breeds and sizes of dogs needing new families.

Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of American Bulldog, Chihuahua, dachshund, Labrador Retriever, McNab, pit bull, shepherd and terrier.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).

This male terrier mix is in kennel No. 2, ID No. 11374. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Terrier mix

This male terrier mix has a coarse black and brown coat.

He already has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 2, ID No. 11374.

“Cally” is a female pit bull terrier in kennel No. 5, ID No. 11351. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

‘Cally’

“Cally” is a female pit bull terrier with a short tan and white coat.

She’s in kennel No. 5, ID No. 11351.

“Crow” is a male pit bull terrier in kennel No. 7, ID No. 11275. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

‘Crow’

“Crow” is a male pit bull terrier with a short black and white coat.

He already has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 7, ID No. 11275.

This male terrier is in kennel No. 8, ID No. 11346. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Male terrier

This male terrier has a short tan and white coat.

He’s in kennel No. 8, ID No. 11346.

This male pit bull mix is in kennel No. 11, ID No. 11402. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Pit bull mix

This male pit bull mix has a short gray and white coat.

He’s in kennel No. 11, ID No. 11402.

“Zara” is a female pit bull-Chihuahua mix in kennel No. 14, ID No. 11337. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

‘Zara’

“Zara” is a female pit bull-Chihuahua mix with a short brown and brindle coat.

She has already been altered.

She is in kennel No. 14, ID No. 11337.

This male Chihuahua is in kennel No. 15, ID No. 11375. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Male Chihuahua

This male Chihuahua has a short black coat.

He’s in kennel No. 15, ID No. 11375.

This male Chihuahua is in kennel No. 16a, ID No. 11321. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Male Chihuahua

This male Chihuahua has a short tan and white coat.

He already has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 16a, ID No. 11321.

This male Chihuahua-dachshund mix is in kennel No. 16b, ID No. 11322. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Chihuahua-dachshund mix

This male Chihuahua-dachshund mix has a medium-length brown and black coat.

He already has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 16b, ID No. 11322.

This female Labrador Retriever-pit bull mix is in kennel No. 17, ID No. 11384. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Labrador Retriever-pit bull mix

This female Labrador Retriever-pit bull mix has a short cream-colored coat.

She’s in kennel No. 17, ID No. 11384.

This female Labrador Retriever is in kennel No. 18, ID No. 11239. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Female Labrador Retriever

This female Labrador Retriever has a medium-length black coat with white markings.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 18, ID No. 11239.

This young male shepherd is in kennel No. 20, ID No. 11385. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Male shepherd

This young male shepherd has a short brindle coat with white markings.

He’s in kennel No. 20, ID No. 11385.

This female pit bull terrier is in kennel No. 22, ID No. 11192. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Female pit bull terrier

This female pit bull terrier has a short brown coat.

She’s in kennel No. 22, ID No. 11192.

This female pit bull terrier is in kennel No. 23, ID No. 10226. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

‘Molly’

“Molly” is a female pit bull terrier.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 23, ID No. 10226.

“Saint” is a male American Bulldog-pit bull terrier mix in kennel No. 24, ID No. 11236. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

‘Saint’

“Saint” is a male American Bulldog-pit bull terrier mix.

He has a short blue and brindle coat.

He’s in kennel No. 24, ID No. 11236.

This female Labrador Retriever is in kennel No. 27, ID No. 11400. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Female Labrador Retriever

This female Labrador Retriever has a short gray coat.

She’s in kennel No. 27, ID No. 11400.

This male terrier-McNab mix is in kennel No. 32, ID No. 11211. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Male terrier-McNab

This male terrier-McNab mix has a short black coat.

He already has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 32, ID No. 11211.

This male pit bull terrier is in kennel No. 33, ID No. 11345. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control.

Male pit bull terrier

This male pit bull terrier has a short gray and brown coat.

He’s in kennel No. 33, ID No. 11345.

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm.

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Posted On

Harry Dashawn Van Dyke, 46, of Las Vegas, Nevada, has been ordered to stand trial in a sexual molestation case. Lake County Jail photo.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Friday a Las Vegas man was ordered to stand trial on charges that he sexually molested his young daughter.

Harry Dashawn Van Dyke, 46, was in court for the judge’s ruling on Friday afternoon at the end of his preliminary hearing.

Van Dyke has remained in custody since his Sept. 6 arrest by the Clearlake Police Department.

Dressed in an orange and white jumpsuit, he sat in the jury box, with his defense attorney, Andrea Sullivan beside him.

The child’s mother reported the alleged abuse in February to the Clearlake Police Department, which investigated the case. Senior Deputy District Attorney Ed Borg said the case was filed in April.

Van Dyke – a musician, producer and actor – was living out of state when he was arrested in September, Borg said.

The abuse is alleged to have taken place from Aug. 1 to Nov. 25, 2015, when Van Dyke’s daughter was 5 years old, Borg said.

On Friday afternoon, Judge Andrew Blum heard arguments from both Borg and Sullivan as the preliminary hearing wrapped up.

Sullivan raised issues of the child being coached during her interview with investigators, while Borg argued there was ample evidence presented to support the charges at the preliminary hearing phase.

Blum said he went through recordings of the child’s interview with investigators as well as the transcripts. He noted major errors in the transcripts, including the failure to record the child’s statement, “My real dad molested me,” noting that Sullivan had raised those issues also.

The judge went on to point out that several questions and answers recorded in the interview also were not found in the transcript.

He said the evidentiary level at this point in the process was pretty low, “But, still, prelim means something.”

As such, he dismissed the first count in the case, which alleged sexual intercourse with a child under age 10, which results in a life sentence on conviction, as he said the evidence failed to meet the “strong suspicion” standard.

What remained were two counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child, which carries a 10-year sentence on conviction. Blum said the child related incidents that those charges were based on several times, and he didn’t see coaching in the interviews.

“There is no corroboration as we know, but that’s not unusual,” said Blum, noting that such crimes are not usually committed with witnesses.

The child had told the investigator that her mother had walked in during one incident in which her father was touching her, but the mother denied that. Blum said the woman has no ax to grind, and the mother’s denial of that incident significantly weakens the child’s story.

Blum paused, chin on his hand. “It’s a strong suspicion, that’s all it is at this point, and I think they’ve met that standard,” he finally said, referring to the prosecution.

However, he said the case didn’t meet the level of being beyond a reasonable doubt, and so he dismissed the charge alleging intercourse due to lack of evidence – “I have no idea if it happened or not” – and instead held Van Dyke to answer on the two lewd and lascivious charges.

Sullivan also asked to revisit Van Dyke’s bail amount.

Van Dyke has been held on $1 million bail for the charge alleging intercourse, however, with that dropped, Judge Blum was willing to reduce bail to $100,000.

Blum ordered Van Dyke to return to court for arraignment on the information at 8:15 a.m. Nov. 27.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Posted On

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A local teenager and two Fresno women were injured in a crash in Nice on Wednesday afternoon.

The California Highway Patrol said the two-vehicle wreck occurred on Highway 20 at Lakeshore Boulevard at 3:50 p.m.

Steve White, 19, of Clearlake was driving his 2004 Chevrolet Impala eastbound on Highway 20 near Lakeshore Boulevard while Karen Miles, 58, was driving a 2018 Nissan Rogue westbound on Highway 20 with 68-year-old Amy Kircher riding in the right front passenger seat, the CHP said.

As the vehicles approached each other, White lost control of his Chevrolet and hit a metal guardrail. The CHP report said that the impact caused White’s Chevy to cross into the opposing westbound lane, directly in the path of Miles’ Nissan.

The CHP said the two vehicles collided head-on, causing the Nissan to overturn and land on its right – or passenger – side in a drainage ditch.

After the collision, White was able to exit his vehicle and remained on scene. The CHP said Miles and Kircher remained in the overturned vehicle until extricated by emergency personnel.

All three were wearing seat belts at the time of the crash, according to the report.

The CHP said White, who had moderate injuries, found his own transportation to Sutter Lakeside Hospital, while Miles was transported there by ambulance for treatment of minor injuries.

Kircher suffered moderate injuries and was flown by air ambulance to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, the CHP said.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

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