Updated Monday, Oct. 28, at 7:35 p.m.
Firefighters continued their battle against the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County on Monday, trying to use a break in extreme winds to increase containment of a blaze that prompted evacuation orders over the weekend for more than 180,000 people.
Winds that pushed the fire over the weekend – with a top gust of 102 mph recorded in The Geysers area of Sonoma County on Sunday morning – decreased dramatically Monday.
Cal Fire commanders said they hoped to use the period of relative calm to bolster containment lines on the northeast flank of the fire, near Mount St. Helena, and in the Shiloh Ridge and Mark West Springs area on the north side of Santa Rosa. On Monday, they performed further structure defense in the evacuated towns of Healdsburg and Windsor.
Cal Fire allowed residents to repopulate areas west of East Side Road throughout Russian River Valley and Bodega Bay, as well as areas south of Occidental Road on Monday evening. However, evacuation warnings for these areas remain in place.
The respite from hostile winds will be brief, with another episode of gusty weather likely to begin after sunrise Tuesday.
“We’re playing both offensive and defensive right now on two different sides of the fire, and we’re going to have to flip flop that tomorrow when that wind event comes through,” said Cal Fire division chief Jonathan Cox during a media briefing Monday night.
That next windstorm has prompted PG&E to warn customers that it will once again cut power to an as yet unannounced number of customers in as many as 32 counties. It will be the utility’s third voluntary blackout in a week.
The Sonoma County conflagration, dubbed the Kincade Fire, broke out last Wednesday night in The Geysers area and quickly threatened Geyserville, Healdsburg and Windsor.
Cal Fire said that by late Monday, the blaze had burned 74,324 acres. The fire has destroyed 123 buildings, including at least 57 homes, and is threatening nearly 90,000 more structures, according to Cal Fire. More that 4,100 personnel are working the blaze. Two firefighters have been injured, with one being airlifted to UC Davis for burns.
National Weather Service meteorologist Ryan Walbrun said Monday the wind that pushed the fire hard over the weekend is slowing but that will change soon.
“It’s going to give us a good window of opportunity with some quieter weather this afternoon, overnight tonight and into Tuesday morning,” Walbrun said. “So we hope the firefighters can take advantage of those calmer weather conditions. What we’re starting to get ready for though is another red flag event. Right now it looks like that’s going to start some time Tuesday morning and push us into Wednesday morning.”
Cal Fire fire behavior analyst Steve Volmer said Monday the change in weather should reduce the fire intensity, but there were still “a lot of problems with the fire-weakened timber in the area.”
“It’s coming down across the roads, causing us issues getting to and from the area, as well as causing a lot of spot fires to roll out down those steep drainages in the northern portion of the incident,” Volmer said.
On Sunday, Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick also advised individuals to heed evacuation orders.
“You cannot win,” Essick said Sunday. “When this fire decides to make a run and the winds are pushing it, you can’t win and you’re really putting yourself at risk, and you’re putting those firefighters who are going to have to come in and rescue you at risk as well.”
In addition to Geyserville, Healdsburg and Windsor, portions of northern Santa Rosa and most of Sonoma County west of U.S. 101 to the coast are also under evacuation orders.
Evacuation warnings have been placed on the following: the city of Calistoga, Napa County north of Diamond Mountain Road to Dunaweal Lane; east of the Sonoma County/Napa County Line; south of the Lake County/Napa County line; parts of Lake County; areas west of Healdsburg and Windsor and south of Occidental Road.
Jonathan Cox, a division chief with Cal Fire, warned everyone in the region to be prepared.
“We ask that everybody who is outside of an evacuation zone have a plan,” Cox said Sunday. “This fire could change direction and activity at any moment and that could result in additional evacuations.”
Fire conditions statewide have made California a “tinderbox,” Cox said. Of the state’s 58 counties, 43 were under warnings for high fire danger Sunday.
The Sonoma County Office of Education announced all school districts in the county would shut down schools Monday and Tuesday, and would asses on a day-to-day basis when those schools would reopen. Schools were also closed in Marin County, which was almost 100% blacked out in the PG&E outage.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday declared a statewide emergency “due to the effects of unprecedented high-wind events, which have resulted in fires and evacuations across the state.”
Newsom has launched a series of critiques against PG&E in recent weeks. In an interview with KQED News on Sunday, he challenged a recent assertion by PG&E executives that the company may need to impose widespread preemptive power outages for as long as the next decade.
“This does not have to be the new normal,” Newsom said. “Those saying this will take 10 years to fix are telling you something that factually cannot be true. We will hit the ground running as soon as we deal with the Kincade Fire and deal with these flareups.”
At an evacuation center at Napa Valley College, Francisco Alvarado, 15, said he, two younger brothers and his parents decided to leave their Calistoga home in advance of evacuation orders. Two years ago, the family had to flee the deadly Tubbs Fire – in the middle of the night.
“I’m pretty mad that we have to keep evacuating,” he said. “I just want to be home. I’m trying to leave here tomorrow; I want to sleep in my bed.”
Hundreds of people arrived at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa by Sunday. Some came from nursing homes. More than 300 people slept in an auditorium filled with cots and wheeled beds. Scores of others stayed in a separate building with their pets.
Among them was Maribel Cruz, 19, who packed up her dog, four cats and fish as soon as she was told to flee her trailer in the town of Windsor, about 60 miles north of San Francisco. She also grabbed a neighbor’s cat.
“I’m just nervous since I grew up in Windsor,” she said. “I’m hoping the wind cooperates.”
A historic attraction outside Healdsburg was lost Sunday when wind-blown embers sparked a blaze that engulfed the Soda Rock Winery. The buildings included a general store and post office founded in 1869.
Elsewhere in the Bay Area on Sunday, firefighters rushed to contain a series of fires in Vallejo, Crockett, Martinez, Bethel Island, Clayton, Lafayette and on the outskirts of Orinda. Each other those fires briefly threatened residential areas and prompted evacuations, but each was stopped with little or no damage.
Also in Martinez Sunday, the relentlessly gusty winds knocked over a 30-foot tree at a farmers market, injuring nine people, including a toddler.
KQED’s Don Clyde, Ted Goldberg and Jeremy Siegel contributed to this post. Reporting from the Associated Press was also used in this post.
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