Northern Calif. wildfire prompts evacuations
Wind-driven Kincade Fire has burned more than 10,000 acres
A fast-moving wildfire, aided by powerful winds, burned through Northern California on Thursday, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate parts of Sonoma County — the rural wine country 75 miles north of San Francisco that is still recovering from a deadly 2017 blaze.
The Kincade Fire, which started late Wednesday, spread rapidly overnight, burning more than 10,000 acres and growing at a rate of 30 football fields per minute. By Thursday afternoon, authorities were still struggling to fight it and the fire remained zero percent contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The cause of the brush blaze, which began in Geyserville, is still under investigation, local officials said. No injuries have been reported, but several structures have been damaged or destroyed.
The fire started near where Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility, cut power Wednesday afternoon amid dangerous weather conditions. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office ordered mandatory evacuations in the area — including the entire community of Geyserville — and shut down several major roads.
“This is not the time to stay,” Sonoma Sheriff Mark Essick said at a news conference.
As the wildfire torched Sonoma, and others began to spread in San Bernadino and Marin County, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, railed against the state’s three investor-owned power companies, including PG&E — the utility responsible for the state’s deadliest wildfire ever.
“I must confess, it is infuriating beyond words to live in a state as innovative and extraordinarily entrepreneurial and capable as the state of California, to be living in an environment where we are seeing this kind of disruption and these kinds of blackouts,” Newsom said, echoing statements he made two weeks earlier when PG&E intentionally shut off power to nearly a million customers in a desperate hedge against wildfire risk.
“It’s more than just climate change … ,” Newsom said. “As it relates to PG&E, it’s about dog-eatdog capitalism meeting climate change, it’s about corporate greed meeting climate change, it’s about decades of mismanagement.”
Newsom criticized the companies for what he said was deferring or ignoring critical maintenance and upgrades that could have mitigated fire spread. He sent a letter Thursday to the CEOs of San Diego Gas & Electric Company, Edison International and PG&E demanding better communication about when the utilities would implement precautionary power shutoffs.
“The only consistency has been inconsistency,” he wrote.
The National Weather Service had issued red flag warnings for much of the San Francisco Bay area effective until 4 p.m. local time Thursday, including the region where the Kincade Fire is burning. Gusty winds of up to 60 mph are possible in mountainous areas, with valleys seeing winds gusting to about 35 mph — though they are expected to weaken as the day goes on, according to a NWS forecast.
Although conditions are expected to improve by Friday night and Saturday, another major offshore wind event is forecast for the second half of the weekend across large parts of California.