A catastrophic wildfire that tore through southern Lake County — destroying as many as 1,000 homes and sending more than 19,000 residents fleeing for safety — appeared Sunday to have killed at least one person as it continued its rampage, expanding in every direction and advancing into remote, rugged areas of neighboring Sonoma and Napa counties.

Cal Fire was still trying Sunday night to confirm a report of a fatality related to the fast-moving fire, though no details were available.

The Valley fire had blackened more than 85 square miles by Sunday night, wiping out large swaths of several communities with a speed that public officials described as the worst-case scenario many in drought-ravaged California had feared.

CALISTOGA — In Calistoga, amid the collection of sorrows, relief, frustrations and worries that makes up the primary Valley fire evacuation center, animals are everywhere.

They are a comfort to their owners, many of whom were stripped by the fire of nearly all else and are now sheltered in various stages of disarray at the Napa County Fairgrounds.

“It means everything, they’re our babies,” said Cristi Garner, 41. The fire destroyed the Anderson Springs home where she lives with her mother, she said. On Monday, she sat away from a damp breeze, in a crowded tent with her mother and Zoe and Maximus, a chihuahua and a chihuahua mix.

Trained to jump off helicopters and launch early attacks on wildfires with only the tools on their backs, four firefighters took off from the Boggs Mountain Helitack Base in a Super Huey chopper Saturday during the Valley fire’s first explosive moments.

Firefighters Niko Matteoli, Richard Reiff, Logan Pridmore and Capt. Pat Ward hit the ground on the northern slope of Cobb Mountain in Lake County and went head-to-head with the fire, which would rip through more than 40,000 acres in its first eight hours.

In that first hour, the inferno’s flames overtook them, forcing the men to seek shelter in cocoon-like protective tents in a harrowing scene with fire burning all around them.

For people who still don’t know whether their homes were consumed by the Valley fire, waiting day after day for word has become a painful purgatory, where stress and anxiety reign.

A few have been lucky enough to actually enter the disaster zone and see for themselves whether their homes were spared or destroyed. Others have received a text photo of their houses from a neighbor or friend in law enforcement, a firefighter, a PG&E worker.

For them, the waiting is over; the news, good or bad, is welcomed.

ANDERSON SPRINGS — Searching for the scent of death, teams of cadaver dogs Thursday canvassed the blackened ruins of homes devoured by the Valley fire as the 5-day-old wildfire continued to expand.

The death toll rose Thursday as authorities confirmed that three people are now believed to have perished in the devastating blaze following the discovery of two more bodies in Hidden Valley and Anderson Springs.

Firefighters continued efforts to stamp out stubborn hot spots ahead of what is predicted to be another scorching hot weekend. The most active fronts were in the southeast section of the fire zone, in the area of Aetna Springs, near Pope Valley, and also areas from the Geysers all the way through Cobb, Loch Lomond and Seigler Springs, said Paul Lowenthal, assistant fire marshal for Santa Rosa Fire department and a spokesman for agencies battling the Valley fire.

Human grandeur and agony co-exist in the disaster zone that before last Saturday was the parched but welcoming greater Middletown.

When the ordinary Lake County weekend turned hellish, Dr. Jeff Smith switched to survival mode. Once he saw that his Middletown Animal Hospital hadn’t burned, the veterinarian; his son, Connor, 19; and a friend of Connor’s set out to check devastated areas for pets and ranch animals.

They found many, and they witnessed scenes of fire-borne destruction that sucked the air from their lungs.

MIDDLETOWN — Craig Eve wants to show off a picture of his new home.

Wearing his red work vest and standing behind the desk in the hardware department of Hardester’s on Main Street in Middletown, Eve thumbs through a few photos on his phone before finding the one he’s looking for. He turns the phone around to show a visitor the picture: a barren landscape of scorched earth, with a chimney rising up in the middle of the frame.

“That’s my new house,” he said, a small smile on his lips. “That’s how I look at it.”

CALISTOGA — People displaced by the massive Valley fire folded their tents and loaded their vehicles on Tuesday, departing from their impromptu home here at the Napa County Fairgrounds, with some going back to houses still standing and others facing only rubble and an uncertain future after the destructive wildfire.

The evacuees had put their lives on hold here for up to 10 days since the Valley fire ignited and swept over a huge swath of southern Lake County, burning more than 1,200 homes and killing at least three people.

They slept in tents, RVs and a fairgrounds building and came together three times a day over meals. They cared for the pets and livestock saved from the fire and generally had come to regard one another as neighbors.

Family and friends of a Cobb man who is thought to have perished in the Valley fire are struggling to understand why he didn’t flee his home in time to escape the inferno.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday identified Robert Taylor Fletcher, 66, as a presumed victim of the fire based on the discovery of human remains in the area of Fletcher’s home. If confirmed by forensic tests, he would become the fourth person known to have died in the blaze.

Fletcher presumably was at his Humboldt Drive home in the Hobergs area of Cobb on the afternoon of Sept. 12 when flames fanned by a gusting wind rocketed up the forested hillside. As residents frantically scrambled to evacuate, several neighbors of Fletcher’s noticed that he had not emerged from his house.

In a perfect world, most of us would still today have no idea what or where Anderson Springs is.

Off-the-radar remoteness and quietude are primary charms of the wooded, mountainside enclave between Middletown and Cobb that was born in 1873 as a hot springs resort. Ask full-time or second-home residents what else they’ve loved about Anderson Springs, and they’ll speak of the neighbors who’d do anything for you, the hilarious bocce games, the potluck suppers, the conspicuously clean air and water, long summer days in the communal swimming hole, outdoor movie nights and myriad other benefits of a tight, true, old-fashioned country community.

“It was a miracle of a place,” resident Angelo Parisi said. “An old-school kind of place.”

Mario Uribe was elated when he returned to Cobb Mountain on Saturday after two weeks living as an evacuee to find his family’s home untouched by flames from the Valley fire.

That joy quickly turned to shock, and then rage, when Uribe, 38, discovered the home in the Whispering Pines neighborhood had been ransacked by thieves in the family’s mandatory absence.

Stepping inside, Uribe found the contents of almost every drawer in the house emptied onto beds and the floor. The owner of a landscaping business, Uribe estimates the thieves stole $38,000 in cash he had stashed throughout the house and in an outdoor shed, where numerous tools also were missing.

At the Animal Hospital of Cotati this week, veterinary technician Elizabeth Pierce leaned over to cocoon a terrified cat whose bright red and peeling paw pads revealed heartbreaking evidence of a wildfire’s scorching rage.

“You’re OK. You’re OK,” Pierce soothed as veterinarian Katheryn Hinkle stuck a needle into one of the cat’s hind legs and pushed the plunger down. “We love you.”

Within seconds, the black-and-white cat, given the name Sylvester by the hospital’s staff, settled down, and soon, was out completely. Hinkle unwrapped the bandages on one of the cat’s paws to begin the laborious process of disinfecting the wounds and removing dead tissue. She applied fresh burn cream on the pads before she and another vet tech re-wrapped the injury and moved on to the next paw.

Overwhelmed by spot fires in bone-dry pine needles and leaf litter at their feet, a Cal Fire captain and three firefighters retreated to a patch of bare earth on a Cobb Mountain ridgetop during the first hour of the voracious Valley fire on Sept. 12.

But they were not safe for long in the fenced goat pen where they took refuge. The wind picked up, the spot fires multiplied and one man saw the flames “sheeting and swirling” across a nearby driveway.

Then, a brush-covered slope “torched into a wall of flame,” according to Cal Fire’s first published report on the blaze that killed four people and charred 76,067 acres in Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties.

MIDDLETOWN — Community. That’s what Friday night lights was about in Middletown on Friday, according to Neal Karp.

Not the opportunity to beat key league rival Fort Bragg, but community.

And Karp is a football guy.

Friday night marked the first time the Middletown High School Mustangs played a home football game since the deadly Valley fire killed four people, destroyed more than 1,200 homes, including entire blocks in Middletown.

Residents of southern Lake County watched in horror last month as fast-moving flames from the Valley fire burned over a wide swath of the mixed conifer and oak forest that covered hillsides and shaded rural neighborhoods, leaving a patchwork of torched and singed trees intermixed with others that escaped evident damage.

Well before the fire was contained, firefighters, road and utility workers began felling and removing thousands of trees on public and private property. Officials said the trees were damaged and presented a danger to residents, motorists and infrastructure, including power and telephone lines.

The Valley fire that ravaged parts of Lake County last month caused more than $1.5 billion in economic losses, making it the costliest wildfire since 2007 and one of the largest in the state’s history, according to a preliminary estimate.

Insured losses from the fire that was sparked on Sept. 12 and not fully contained until Oct. 6 will likely exceed $925 million, according to preliminary estimates in a report by Aon Benfield, a division of global insurance giant Aon PLC.

The fire destroyed 1,958 structures, according to Cal Fire, including 1,280 homes, 27 multi-family structures, 66 commercial properties and 585 other minor structures. Economic losses also include numerous cars and personal property that were damaged or destroyed as a result of the fast-moving blaze, which killed four people and injured four firefighters.

Two men suspected of looting during the Valley fire have entered into plea agreements with the Lake County District Attorney’s Office.

Jeremiah Patrick McGinnis, 25, of Cobb has pleaded guilty to two charges of burglary, one for each of the two victims, said Lake County District Attorney Don Anderson. The plea is expected to bring a five-year-prison sentence, he said.

McGinnis was arrested Sept. 17 while driving a stolen Jeep Grand Cherokee painted to look like a law enforcement vehicle, sheriff’s officials said. Inside the vehicle, deputies found a TV, ammunition and other items believed to have been stolen.

Those Red Cross debit cards people received after losing their homes in the Valley fire?

They’d better use them now, because the money could disappear in 60 days.

Complaints are emerging from people who received calls from Red Cross workers urging them to spend the money before it goes away, raising concerns that the tactic makes it less likely the millions in donations made to the disaster relief powerhouse will be used by people in need.

“The American public isn’t giving the donation thinking if you don’t use it in the next few days it will be taken away from you,” said Hidden Valley Lake resident Teresa Welter, whose 22-year-old sons lost their shared apartment on Barnes Street to the fire. “It’s very misleading.”

Federal disaster relief officials have approved more than $20 million in aid for victims of Lake County’s catastrophic Valley fire as well as the Butte fire that burned through Calaveras County in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The state Office of Emergency Services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration approved the funds, allocating about half to businesses and half to residents.

The approval, announced by FEMA on Friday, provides another gauge of the devastation the two Northern California wildfires wrought six weeks ago. The Sept. 9 Butte fire killed two people and destroyed nearly 500 homes as it ripped through 70,000 acres in the Sierra foothills.

With flames swirling all around them, four firefighters trapped on a narrow Lake County ridge during the first hour of what would become the state’s third-most-catastrophic wildfire made the last-ditch decision most avoid at all costs: Seek refuge in emergency fire-resistant shelters.

“The ground was on fire,” Cal Fire firefighter Niko Matteoli said. “It didn’t need to be verbalized; we all knew immediately the intensity of the situation and we all just acted. There was no hesitation.”

But at that critical moment, with their faces already burned, firefighters Matteoli, 24, of Santa Rosa and Logan Pridmore found the outer packaging of the standard-issue shelters carried by wildland firefighters across the country had melted. Matteoli removed his gloves and tore away the molten plastic with his bare hands, and eventually he and Pridmore hid from the heat under one aluminum cocoon.

Most of the adoptable dogs and cats rescued from some 76,067 charred acres in southern Lake County and housed at its animal shelter have either been reunited with their owners or adopted.

This fall’s Valley fire — one of the most destructive in state history — destroyed almost 1,300 homes and killed four people and dozens of farm animals and pets.

Most of the 11 cats and three dogs that remained in the county shelter on Friday were expected to be taken by other animal rescue organizations that will take over efforts to find homes for the animals, said Lake County Animal Care and Control Director Bill Davidson.

Two months after fleeing the massive fire that destroyed their Middletown apartment along with more than 1,300 other homes and 76,067 acres of forest and wildlands, the Madrigal-Lopez family is still living in a travel trailer at the Hidden Valley Lake campground.

But the onslaught of winter and the planned closure of the campground have them rethinking their limited options.

“It’s very cold,” said Rozio Madrigal, who also recently discovered that the loaned travel trailer leaks when it rains.

On this national day of gratitude some 11 weeks past the initial night of terror and tragedy wrought by the Valley fire, a handyman, singer/songwriter and accidental hero named Steve Shurelian misses some of what he lost, nothing more so than his cat, Kit.

At the same time, Shurelian, 61, tells of feeling thankful for what — and who — he was able to save. Though the former resident of the almost entirely incinerated Anderson Springs neighborhood appreciates the praise and donations he has received for what he did there the fiery evening of Sept. 12, he asks not to be over-adulated.

He did evacuate and find hasty shelter for himself and a disabled neighbor, Jim Young, who was in stark peril. And he did use a pair of garden hoses to dampen buildings in Anderson Springs’ beloved, poolside recreation center — community structures that might otherwise have burned.

’Tis the season to give, and this year, a Cobb Mountain resident hopes you’ll consider giving something that’s a little unusual: your Christmas tree. Once you’re done with it, that is.

Kathy Blair, 49, is asking people to buy potted Christmas trees this year, rather than cut ones, and donate them at the end of the holiday season to her grass-roots group, which will then distribute them among Lake County homeowners whose properties were ravaged by the Valley fire.

While Blair’s home was spared by the blaze, her good friend wasn’t so lucky.

HIDDEN VALLEY LAKE — At a campground on the outskirts of this rural Lake County subdivision, people forced into a nomadic lifestyle when the massive Valley fire consumed their homes are reluctantly preparing to relocate once again.

The campground — bordered by streams — is prone to flooding and is scheduled to close Monday for safety reasons, according to Hidden Valley Lake Association officials. The association, which owns the facility, has provided free camping, showers and bathrooms to scores of fire evacuees since the Valley fire raged through 76,067 acres in southern Lake County, destroying nearly 1,300 homes and 27 multi-unit complexes. The blaze displaced thousands of residents.

“We’re very concerned about the health and safety issues,” said Charles Russ, director of operations for the homeowners association.

A couple who lost their Hidden Valley Lake home and nearly all their worldly possessions in the Valley fire is rejoicing after being reunited with one of their dogs, which appears to have escaped a locked, burning home and then survived on her own for 116 days.

“She’s our miracle dog,” said Darci Andrews of Tia, her husky and pit bull mix who now is living with Andrews and her family in a trailer in Anderson Springs.

Two other dogs — one known for certain to have died — two cats and two rats also were in the rented house when it was swallowed up by the 76,067-acre Valley fire, which destroyed more than 1,200 homes in mid-September. Andrews and her boyfriend, Bernie Hosmer, had secured their pets indoors while they were out of town.