FRANTIC EVACULATION LEFT ANIMALS TO FACE WILDLIFE ALONE

     When the Valley Fire blew up in this rural area 100 miles north of San Francisco last weekend, many residents fled with only the clothes they were wearing. The suddenness of the fire’s surge — half an hour from warning to life-threatening conflagration in many parts of Lake County — sent people scattering, their homes undefended and possessions left to fate or luck.

And in a drought-parched state, that luck was bad. The blaze, 30 percent contained after consuming 67,200 acres, has killed one person and injured four others, with 585 homes destroyed and the state of hundreds more uncertain, according to state fire officials. More than 7,600 structures remained threatened. Financial and personal losses, still uncounted, will be unquestionably staggering.

    Vineyard owners, many of them in midharvest when the fire struck, have begun adding up the effects of heat and smoke, which can damage grape quality even if vines survive. Farm equipment and hundreds of outbuildings and barns lay in ruins, with smoking embers mixing in places with the harshersmells of oil and melted machinery. 

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