High winds fan wildfires; hundreds more flee homes
SONOMA, California — Rising winds fanned the California wildfires again Saturday, forcing hundreds more people to flee from their homes in the state’s fabled wine country and threatening to undo the efforts of crews who have spent days trying to corral the flames behind firebreaks.
Just a day after firefighters reported making significant progress, the winds kicked up and pushed flames into the hills at the edge of Sonoma, a town of 11,000. About 400 homes were evacuated in Sonoma and a portion of Santa Rosa tincluding a retirement community that evacuated earlier this week, authorities said.
“Things went to hell last night,” said Dean Vincent Bordigioni, proprietor at the Annadel Estate Winery, who awoke at 3 a.m. to see flames erupting over the ridge above his property. “They’ve got a good fight going on.”
Nearly a week after the blazes began, the zone containing scattered fires had swollen to an area as wide as 160 kilometres. The flames have left at least 35 people dead and destroyed at least 5,700 homes and businesses, making them the deadliest and most destructive group of wildfires California has seen.
On Saturday, an unknown number of additional structures burned down in a rural area, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Judy Guttridge, who was evacuating for the second time this week, said her daughter saw flames advancing over the side of a hill around the same time Bordigioni did and told the family to get out.
“I have good insurance, everything,” she said. “All the kids, grandkids, great-grandkids are fine. I’m OK with that.”
Firefighters spent much of the last week digging defence lines to keep the flames from spreading. On Friday, they tried to fortify the edge of Sonoma using bulldozers and other heavy equipment.
But if winds push the flames over that barrier, neighbourhoods including some of the town’s costliest homes stand in the path, along with a historic central plaza built centuries ago.
The renewed strength of the winds was “testing the work that we accomplished,” Berlant said. The greatest risk was that winds would blow embers across the firebreaks and ignite new blazes.
By early afternoon, state fire officials said they had halted the fire’s advance into the city of Sonoma. But winds gusting up to 65 km/h were expected to continue into the evening.
The latest estimates showed that about 100,000 people were under evacuation orders as the fires burned for a sixth day. Some people have demanded to get back into their homes.
Douglas and Marian Taylor stood outside their apartment complex Saturday in Santa Rosa with their two dogs and a sign that said “End evacuation now.”
Their building was unharmed at the edge of the evacuation zone. The couple said they are spending about $300 per day and they want to return home because the fire does not appear to threaten their building.