Fires rip through Sonoma, Napa wine country
SANTA ROSA — Another series of wildfires stormed California’s wine country overnight as flames destroyed numerous homes and other buildings in Napa and Sonoma counties and forced tens of thousands to flee.
The number of structures damaged or destroyed was unclear as of early Monday, “but there was significant loss” in some areas, Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner said.
All told, almost 34,000 people have been ordered to evacuate, officials said, while more than 14,000 others have been warned they, too, may have to leave.
A number of homes began to burn early Monday in the suburban eastern neighborhoods of Santa Rosa. The city of 177,000 residents, Sonoma County’s most populous, was devastated three years ago by the Tubbs Fire, which was also driven by strong winds and destroyed about 1,500 homes in the 1980s-built northwestern Coffey Park neighborhood.
On Monday, it was the suburban northeastern neighborhoods of Santa Rosa that were burning, this time from the Shady fire.
Whipped by powerful, hot and dry Diablo winds coming from the north and east, which showered embers onto the city, the fire engulfed houses in the area of Mountain Hawk Drive, which is lined with two-story tract homes in the Skyhawk development, built in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Chief Ben Nicholls with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said crews contended with “explosive fire growth” that saw the flames “burn approximately 4 miles during the course of about six hours overnight.”
Officials stressed the importance of following evacuation orders when they’re issued. Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Juan Valencia said some people refused to leave and later had to be rescued from their homes.
Gov. Gavin Newsom also emphasized the point, saying that “the dynamics of climate change, the dynamics as it relates to the lack of forest management over the last century, have created a dynamic of real concern as it relates to the spread of these wildfires in ferocious ways.”