The deadly McKinney Fire is believed to have been sparked by a 60-foot tall Ponderosa Pine that leaned onto a power line in 108-degree heat, that's what sources close to the investigation are now telling NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit.
The 60,000 acre fire started on July 29, just after 2 p.m. It began on land owned by Mike Story, a volunteer firefighter who rushed to the scene in the fire engine he keeps on his 160-acre property.
“Well, this is not good. Last couple of minutes, the … fire is coming back towards us,” Story is heard saying in a cell phone video during the early moments of the fire.
The same fire that would later destroy his cabin and much of his farm. Later in the video, he can be heard saying, “We’re pretty much wrapping up or evacuating this area.”
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He's soon joined by other crews and had started to make progress, until a storm cell hit, packing 50 mph winds and fueling the fire.
“Here comes the winds fricking blowing this way -- that's towards the house,’’ he is heard saying, followed by “well, I’m f— king out of here.”
The U.S. Forest Service says the cause of the fire is still under investigation, but NBC Bay Area previously reported that early dispatch recordings indicate that the fire started underneath the "right of way" for a Pacific Power distribution line. Sources with knowledge of the probe now say that investigators suspect that it began with a 60-foot tall Ponderosa Pine slumping onto the 12,000 volt Scott Bar line.
PacifiCorp, the parent company of Pacific Power, says none of its equipment has been seized in the investigation of the fire. The utility previously told us it had checked the entire Scott Bar line just hours before the fire, after an unexplained power outage. At that time, company officials said they found nothing out of the ordinary and restored service.
“Frankly, that's ridiculous,” said wildfire attorney Gerald Singleton, who last week filed suit against Pacific Power on behalf of two dozen McKinney fire victims. “If they didn't know what caused it and they went out at night and they still turned it back on, that that would be very difficult, I think, to explain.”
Singleton has previously sued Pacific over the 157,000 acre Slater Fire in 2020. That fire also started in the Klamath National Forest and left two dead.
“If you have fires two years apart -- both of which do cause fatalities, both of which are the result of tree line contact, that's a huge problem,” Singleton said.
Pacific Power says it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
Back near the fire's starting point, Story now pledges to work with his neighbors to rebuild the community meeting hall that he helped run. In the meantime, he wants everyone to know crews did everything possible before they were overwhelmed.
“We wouldn't have left that immediate area,” Story said, “if we didn't have to. But the fire came up so fast. It was seriously a matter of life and death for us.”
