Shannon Gomes, who has a cabin that nearly got caught up in the Lick fire at Henry Coe, posted some fire-damage pictures at flickr.com from near her property.

She posted an interesting comment here the other day. For those who missed it:

The randomness of the burn is amazing. There will be areas of intense burn right next to areas that are hardly touched. One really odd thing is how many of the ridges have “mohawks” of brush on the very top. My father gives one explaination. He was in there during the ’61 fire. He watched flames move uphill so fast that the draft blew out the fire at the top! It left a sheer wall of brush 16′ high at the very top. He described it as if someone cut it with a knife. Really weird.

The good news is our cabin made it through fairly unscathed. Yea! We lost a bridge and our chemical toilet. We sadly lost two fantastic oak trees as well. One was over 21′ in circumfrence. I loved to sit in front of that tree and meditate.. sad. The other oak was right next to the cabin. A little bay tree deflected it’s path as it fell and kept it from flattening our cabin. Believe me we are going to do everything possible to save that bay tree!

Thanks for posting the pics, Shannon.