Though the actual cause of the devastating Valley Fire in Lake County remains under investigation, authorities appear to have located its origination point, and it's in the community of Cobb where some of the earliest flames were spotted Saturday afternoon. As KRON 4 shows us in the video above, investigators have spent the last several days poking around a partially burned shed that sits beside a home that was damaged in the blaze, which appears to have moved quickly west from this property.
Neighbor John Wilcox, whose property is only five acres away, says he saw a plume of smoke rise from the neighboring property on Saturday. "It looked like a little yard fire,” he says. "It caught some wind, blew up the canyon, and it was an inferno in half an hour."
Firefighters said on Sunday and Monday that this fire had not behaved like the average wildfire, with one Stanford scientist Daniel Swain saying it had grown at "mind-boggling" speed and created its own internal winds.
By Sunday afternoon it had already consumed 50,000 acres, burned 400 structures, and claimed at least several lives.
It has now burned nearly 74,000 acres (115 square miles), and it is 35 percent contained as of today.
Previously: Valley Fire May Have Claimed Up To Five Lives; Second And Third Victims Confirmed