Glimmers of hope as fires rage into fifth day
Firefighters begin to contain blazes that have killed 31, ravaged California vineyards
SANTA ROSA, CALIF.— A fifth day of desperate firefighting in California wine country brought a glimmer of hope Friday as crews batting the flames reported their first progress toward containing the massive blazes, and hundreds more firefighters poured in to join the effort.
Seventeen large fires were still burning across Northern California, with more than 9,000 firefighters attacking the flames.
“The emergency is not over, and we continue to work at it, but we are seeing some great progress,” said the state’s emergency operations director, Mark Ghilarducci.
Over the past 24 hours, crews arrived from Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North and South Carolina, Oregon and Arizona. Other teams came from as far away as Canada and Australia.
Since igniting Sunday in spots across eight counties, the blazes have killed 31 people, destroyed at least 3,500 homes and businesses and reduced entire neighbourhoods to ash and rubble.
With hundreds still reported missing, the death toll was expected to keep rising. Individual fires, including the Oakland Hills blaze of 1991, killed more people than any one of the current blazes, but no collection of simultaneous fires in California ever led to so many deaths, authorities said.
Dozens of search-and-rescue personnel at a mobile home park in Santa Rosa carried out the grim task Friday of searching for the remains of residents who did not escape in time. Fire tore through Santa Rosa early Monday, leaving only a brief window for people to flee.
Officers recovered bone fragments from one person Friday morning and there was a “high probability” they would find more, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dave Thompson said.
Authorities believe there may be two or three more bodies in the levelled remains of the mobile home park, he said.
The influx of outside help offered critical relief to firefighters who have been working with little rest since the blazes started.
“It’s like pulling teeth to get firefighters and law enforcement to disengage from what they are doing out there,” CalFire’s Napa chief Barry Biermann said.
“They are truly passionate about what they are doing to help the public, but resources are coming in. That’s why you are seeing the progress we’re making.”
In addition to manpower, equipment deliveries have poured in. Crews were using 840 fire engines from across California and another 170 sent from around the country.
Before dawn, four fire trucks rolled out of Eastside Fire and Rescue in Issaquah, Washington, part of three King County strike teams. The 50 firefighters in16 vehicles rolled south for an 18-day deployment.
“These guys are trained in wildland fires, and this is what they love to do,” Eastside Fire Chief Jeff Clark said.
Although they pitch in elsewhere in Washington and Oregon, Eastside has not sent crews to California since 2007.
Two of the largest fires in Napa and Sonoma counties were at least 25-per-cent contained by Friday, which marked “significant progress,” said Ken Pimlott, chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. But he cautioned that crews would face more gusty winds, low humidity and higher temperatures. Those conditions were expec- ted to take hold later Friday and persist into the weekend.
As the fires raged, many people were still searching for lost loved ones and picking through the ashes of their homes, both mentally and physically exhausted by the trauma of the past week.
“It wears you out,” said winemaker Kristin Belair, who was driving back from Lake Tahoe to her as-yet-undamaged home in Napa. “Anybody who’s been in a natural disaster can tell you that it goes on and on. I think you just kind of do hour by hour almost.”