By Dylan Darling

At 12:50 p.m. on Aug. 20, 1992 -- 15 years ago today -- a north state nightmare became reality. A fire spotter at Hogback Lookout saw a spire of smoke coming near the "drinking fountain" on Highway 299, a couple of curves before the road reaches Round Mountain.

The fire actually started about two miles from the historic stonework fountain used throughout the years to quench the thirst of parched draft horses and then-wheezing car radiators.

The blaze soon rolled over the fountain as it cut a devastating path. As the fire grew, so did the smoke. It became a massive mushroom cloud that reached into the stratosphere as if it came from an atomic bomb. The plume was visible from Redding and beyond. The Fountain Fire, one of the most destructive wildfires in terms of buildings lost, had begun.

The blaze cut a swath of destruction from Round Mountain through Montgomery Creek to the fringe of Burney, and from near Oak Run to north of Hill Crest. It ended a week after it began.

Everything was in order that Wednesday for a big wildfire.

"The conditions on that given day were just about as dry as they could be," said Mike Witesman, a retired spokesman for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who worked on the blaze. Six years of drought had left the forest dry as a soda cracker, with extra baking owing to high temperatures that hovered around 100 degrees for 22 consecutive days.

All it took was a single spark, perhaps from a cigarette lighter, and a landscape-changing firestorm was unleashed. Fire officials say the cause of the fire was most likely arson, but no one has ever been charged with a crime.

"We just couldn't get enough firefighters there fast enough," Witesman said.

Fires were burning elsewhere around the state, making fire crews, fire trucks and air tankers scarce.

The Fountain Fire turned 100 square miles -- 64,000 acres -- of forest into a moonscape. It also burned about 300 homes, plus almost as many sheds, garages and other structures, to make it the sixth worst fire in terms of structures lost in the history of the state, according to Cal Fire. One of those structures lost was the home Terry Hufft shared with his wife, Kathy, and their children. The house, built in the 1920s or '30s and nestled into the once-scenic woods east of Montgomery Creek, burned to the ground like so many others in the Fountain Fire.

The family, with seven children, needed a big house rebuilt, but it wasn't easy. Insurance covered only half the costs of rebuilding, which took nine years.

Despite the dramatic impact the fire had on his life, Hufft said he doesn't often think about it or the home it took from him.

"Material things can betaken away and replaced quite easily," Hufft said.

None of his family was harmed in the fire.

Although the fire was fierce and fast-moving -- chewing through 80 acres per minute at one point -- it didn't claim any lives.

Woody Ford, who was away at a Christian retreat near Oroville the day of the fire, also lost his home. Friends called to tell him that the fire was out of control and he hit the road trying to beat the flames to his house.

From the highway he and his wife could see the towering cloud of smoke.

"We saw what appeared to be an atom bomb," Ford said.

By the time he got to the spot in Round Mountain where his home had stood, it was gone.

As a photographer for the Record Searchlight, Michael Burke, now spokesman for Mercy Medical Center in Redding, saw how quickly the fire could wipe away a home like Ford's.

"I took pictures of houses that were there one minute and gone the next," he said.

Burke also documented the fire's devastating second day, when it spread over 75 square miles, or 48,000 acres from sunup to sundown. He captured images of a California Highway Patrol car making a U-turn in front of a 300-foot wall of fire.

Once the inferno died out, residents were left to sift through the blackened remains of their homes.

"I witnessed devastation all over the place," Burke said.

Reporter Dylan Darling can be reached at 225-8266 or at ddarling@redding.com.