Officials give update on Pawnee fire, Mendocino Complex cleanup
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – County officials reported this week that the work to clean up properties damaged by the Pawnee and Mendocino Complex fires is continuing.
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved requests from Lake County Public Health officials to continue proclamations of local emergencies for both the Pawnee fire and Mendocino Complex due to the health hazards that remain because the cleanup is not complete.
Lake County Environmental Health Director Jesse Kang told the board that, as of Oct. 20, debris removal was completed on five parcels out of 12 for the Pawnee fire.
For the Mendocino Complex, Kang said that as of Oct. 20 153 rights-of-entry forms had been submitted by property owners to participate in the state-sponsored cleanup program.
Of those, debris removal had been completed for 44 sites through the state program, seven sites were approved for private cleanup and 13 were approved for modified cleanup, which he said was for outbuildings or barns.
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control is one of the agencies involved in the state cleanup program.
Its Emergency Response Program is assessing and sweeping household hazardous waste and easily transferable pieces of asbestos from homes and other structures destroyed by the Mendocino Complex.
As of early Friday, the agency said that 198 parcels had been assessed and, of those, 190 were identified by the county of Lake and Cal Fire as having been damaged by the fire.
The map above was created using a list of damaged properties created by Cal Fire. About two dozen properties are not shown on this version of the map due to incomplete addresses that the mapping program would not recognize.
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