The Valley Fire was California’s third most destructive fire in our history killing at least 4 civilians and seriously injuring 4 Cal-Fire firefighters assigned to Copter 104 based out of Boggs State Forest. The Valley Fire started on High Valley Road off Bottle Rock Road at 1:35 PM on Saturday September 12th 2015. To get an understanding of how fast this fire moved we have provided a timeline of the fires progress during the first few hours. At 2:09 PM Mandatory Evacuation of Cobb and Loch Lomond ordered, At 2:45 mandatory evacuation of Middletown ordered. By 3:00 the fire had already burned through the Pine Summit neighborhood of Cobb destroyed Hoberg’s Resort and was racing through Boggs State Forest heading toward Middletown, Anderson Springs and Harbin Hot Springs. At 4:00 PM LNU Unit Chief Scott Upton orders a type one incident management team and by 6:07 PM the fire has reached Hidden Valley Lakes and is estimated at 10,000 acres, by 10:30 PM fire has grown to 25,000 acres. In three and a half hours the Valley fire had become the third most devastating fires in California history. During the summer of 2015 from July to September three major fire’s the “Rocky” the “Jerusalem” and the devastating “Valley” Fire tore through Lake County. A total of 1366 homes, 66 Commercial Structures and an additional 659 other structures were destroyed. The three fires blackened a total of 175,000 (One Hundred Seventy Five Thousand) acres. With the upcoming strong El Nino winter approaching, residents of South Lake County must be prepared for the potential of flooding, debris flows and landslides. Please subscribe to Nixle for immediate emergency notification via cell phone and/or E mail  Nixle Website