I helped put out a lightning caused fire at Castle Lake years ago

 I was swimming at Castle Lake and likely kayaking on an inflatable kayak at the time in the 1980s with my family and then thunder storms brought lightning to the area. I saw smoke coming up from down the hill from the Castle Lake Road through the trees. When I saw the smoke from a lightning caused fire I drove back up to the lake to fill a 5 gallon bucket full of water to take to the fire. I also had a shovel in my window van so I took that too when I parked as close to the smoke and fire that I could.

When I climbed down the hill to where the fire was I was amazed what I found:

The lightning had hit the top of the tree and blew off all the bark spiraling down like a barber pole along the tree and lit a fallen tree on fire. So, I tried to figure out how I could help stop the fire from spreading by the effective use of my single 5 gallon bucket of water from Castle Lake which is about 10 to 15 miles from the city of Mt. Shasta and across from Mt. Shasta itself. Castle lake is at about 6000 feet elevation.

So, the problem was that the lightning spiraling down the tree meant the living tree wasn't really on fire but the coaling of the fallen tree was problematic because it had created the fallen tree into a 2 or three foot high Yule log. So, I used the water and the shovel as best I could so the fire wouldn't spread any further. 

However, soon since I was in a National Forest there I believe, a Green Forest Service Fire truck arrived and men came down and relieved me from putting out the fire. So, I took the empty bucket and shovel up and put it into My Window Van and drove home to Mt. Shasta where I lived then with my family and the Forest service later managed to put that fire completely out so it didn't spread beyond less than one acre of land.