California firefighters take offensive against blazes in wine country, LA suburbs
California firefighters aided by subsiding winds took the offensive on Friday against two major wildfires at opposite ends of the state, one displacing 50,000 suburban Los Angeles residents and another roaring through Sonoma County’s famed wine country.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared an emergency for both blazes, which erupted hours apart amid fierce winds this week that put emergency managers on high alert and prompted utilities to impose wide-scale power outages to curtail wildfire risks.
No injuries have been reported from either the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, about 130 km. north of San Francisco, or the Tick fire in the Santa Clarita Valley about 65 km. north of Los Angeles.
But the two blazes, the worst of several large wildfires across the state this week, have destroyed dozens of homes and other structures while prompting air-quality alerts in parts of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area.
The dry, hot desert winds, gusting to 112 kph, gave way to light breezes on Thursday night, slowing the fires’ advance and presenting crews with a chance to make significant headway against the flames.
The lull was expected to be short-lived. Forecasts called for heavy winds to return late on Saturday and persist on Sunday, leaving fire crews a narrow window to tamp down the blazes in Los Angeles and Sonoma counties.
Power companies, led by the state’s largest investor-owned utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., also were bracing for a renewal of galeforce winds.
Even as PG&E worked to restore electricity to nearly 200,000 homes and businesses switched off ahead of this week’s earlier bout of severe winds, the utility announced plans for a new round of precautionary blackouts expected to leave 850,000 customers without power across 36 counties in northern and central California.
The utility cited weather data showing the expected windstorm “could be the most powerful in California in decades.”
Adding to PG&E’s difficulties, the utility acknowledged on Thursday that the Kincade fire, which forced the evacuation of 2,000 people in Sonoma County after erupting on Wednesday night, began near the base of a damaged high-voltage transmission tower the utility owns.
A power shutdown of that scale, affecting millions of people, would surpass even the record outage imposed by PG&E on some 730,000 of its customers in anticipation of a previous windstorm two weeks ago.
That precautionary blackout drew sharp criticism from the governor and regulators as being too widespread as well as poorly managed and communicated to the public.
By Friday, the Kincade fire had charred nearly 22,000 acres in a wine-growing region whose better-known vintners include The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, and destroyed at least 49 dwellings and other structures, officials said.
Evacuation orders included the entire town of Geyserville, an historic enclave that is home to about 900 residents and is named for geothermal features in the vicinity.
Fire crews, backed by helicopters and airplane tankers dumping loads of water and flame-retardant on the blaze, had managed to carve containment lines around just 5% of the blaze as of Friday.
(Reuters)