LANDMARKS
Raging wildfires destroy school, winery,
Wind-whipped wildfires again blew through California’s Napa Valley wine region like a blowtorch Monday, destroying a century-old school after devouring a historic winery, luxury inn and several homes.
Elsewhere in Northern California, a blaze jumped containment lines and threatened Paradise, the town razed by the 2018 Camp fire.
“I’m broken. My principal just called and told me our school burned down. I hadn’t heard. Then I saw a photo, and it was actually my classroom. The whole inside was white with fire. Everything is gone,” Bryan Henry, a teacher at Foothills
Adventist Elementary in St. Helena, Calif., told the Daily News on Monday.
“It’s really hard. It feels surreal. You don’t think this type of devastation will come to you, then when it does, you wonder, ‘How do we move on?’ ” Henry said of the school founded in 1902.
The elementary school was claimed by the Glass fire that broke out around 3:50 a.m. Sunday just north of the Château Boswell Winery, which also burned.
The fire incinerated 11,000 acres of parched landscape “with a dangerous rate of speed” in about 24 hours and was at 0% containment Monday morning, officials said.
A dramatic photo taken by freelance photographer Justin Sullivan showed the Black Rock Inn, a luxury boutique bed and breakfast in St. Helena, fully engulfed in flames.
Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin evacuated her home in the Oakmont community of Santa Rosa about 1 a.m.; her house was damaged in the 2017 fires that previously plagued the region.
“It’s like God has no sympathy, no empathy for Sonoma County,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Our firefighters have not had much of a break, and these residents have not had much of a break,” said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire.
More than 53,000 people in Sonoma and Napa counties have been
evacuated due to latest cluster of fire there, one of 27 major hot spots burning across the state, Berlant said.
Many more have been warned that they might have to flee, even though officials expect winds to ease Tuesday.
Santa Rosa resident Logan Hertel was spotted using a garden hose to ward off flames at a neighbor’s house until firefighters arrived.
“Seems like they got enough on their hands already. So I wanted to step in and put out the fire,” Hertel said, according to The Associated Press.
Pacific Gas & Electric was inspecting its equipment as it sought to restore power to more than 100,000 customers who had it turned off in advance of gusty winds or within active fire zones.
A lengthy investigation determined faulty PG&E equipment sparked the devastating Camp fire, which killed 85 people and led to an estimated $16.5 billion in losses.
As the winds kicked up around the state, an area of the massive North Complex fire burning in Butte County since August roared back to life Sunday, leading officials to put the entire town of Paradise on evacuation warning Sunday night.
The Butte County sheriff’s office also issued evacuation orders for the areas of Pulga, Concow and Big Bend in the Highway 70 corridor as firefighters worked on new “contingency” containment lines.
Farther north in Shasta County, a new blaze named the Zogg fire broke out Sunday afternoon and grew by at least 7,000 acres within hours, prompting mandatory evacuations across the region.
“This was a very fast-moving fire – very fluid, very hot,” Shasta County Sheriff Eric Magrini said at a Monday afternoon press conference.
He said more than 460 homes were evacuated, displacing around 1,250 residents.
“It’s with a sad heart that I come before you to say we’ve had three deaths as a result of this fire,” Magrini said while declining to elaborate on the identities of the victims pending family notification.
“This thing is expanding quickly on us because of the weather and high winds and fuel,” Cal Fire Incident Commander Chief Sean Kavanaugh said at the same press conference.
“With what’s been going on since the middle of August, when really everything started when the lighting season took place, almost every firefighter, law enforcement, EMS, first responder going on almost two months have been out on the fire lines,” he said.
“We’ve all been working long days, and there is a strain on resources – on all resources statewide,” he said. “Folks, I cannot say this enough. You must adhere to evacuation orders.”
More than 3.7 million acres of land have burned across the state in 2020, a record in modern history, causing nearly 30 deaths and destroying more than 7,000 structures.