Teams report first progress against wine country fires
SANTA ROSA, Calif. — A fifth day of desperate firefighting in California wine country brought a glimmer of hope Friday as crews battling 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 neighborhoods 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-andrescue 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 leveled 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.
Two of the largest fires in Napa and Sonoma counties were at least 25 percent contained by Friday, which marked “significant progress,” said Ken Pimlott, chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.