More wine country fires prompt evacuations

Northern California’s wine country was on fire again Monday as strong winds fanned flames in the already scorched region, prompting evacuation orders involving more than 50,000 people.

Residents of the Oakmont Gardens assisted living home in Santa Rosa boarded brightly lit city buses overnight, some wearing bathrobes and using walkers. They wore masks to protect against the coronavirus as orange flames marked the dark sky.

Flames also engulfed the Chateau Boswell Winery north of St. Helena. The Adventist Health St. Helena hospital suspended care and transferred all patients elsewhere, according to a statement on its website.

“We just don’t have words,” state Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents Healdsburg, told KTVU-2 in Oakland. “It’s an incredibly trying and emotional time right now.”

The fires that began Sunday in the famed Napa-Sonoma wine country north of San Francisco came on the third anniversary of deadly wildfires that erupted in 2017, including one that killed 22 people.

The latest inferno began with the Glass Fire at 3:50 a.m.

Sunday and two subsequent fires merged with it, burning 17 square miles (44 square kilometres) as of early Monday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.

More than 53,000 people in Sonoma and Napa counties were under evacuation orders, said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director with Cal Fire.