'It's like a war zone'
23 now dead in ‘catastrophic’ Calif. fires
Firefighters battling 22 raging wildfires in California struggled to tame the infernos Wednesday amid stronger winds that pushed flames through the parched wine country, where the death toll rose to 23 and thousands of more residents were evacuated.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Chief Ken Pimlott called the conflagration “a serious, critical, catastrophic event.”
Despite the efforts of some 8,000 exhausted firefighters, the number of destroyed homes and businesses climbed to at least 3,500, state fire official Daniel Berlant said. At least 180 people have been injured.
Authorities have located more than 100 people reported missing but said about 550 were still unaccounted for.
After a day of cooler weather and calmer winds, officials said low moisture and dangerous gusty winds were complicating firefighters’ efforts.
More than 25,000 people have fled their homes in seven counties north of San Francisco and filled shelters, where they might remain for weeks before they can return to whatever remains of their properties.
Officials in Napa County said almost half of the population of Calistoga, a town of 5,000 people, has been ordered to evacuate. Residents in Solano County’s Green Valley also were told to leave.
In hard-hit Sonoma County, where one of the blazes — known as the Tubbs Fire — killed 11 people, the flames advanced toward populated areas.
Deputies were seen “running toward the fire, banging on doors, getting people out of their houses,” said Misti Harris, a Sonoma County Sheriff ’s Office spokeswoman.
“It’s rapidly changing, it’s moving quickly, it’s a very fluid situation. The fire is growing,” she said.
As of Wednesday morning, about 5,000 people had taken refuge in 36 shelters in Sonoma, officials said.
Tubbs, whose death toll was expected to climb, is California’s deadliest wildfire since 2003, when 15 people lost their lives in the Cedar Fire in San Diego County.
“It’s like driving through a war zone,” J.J. Murphy, 22, told Reuters about the area around his home in the Sonoma Valley community of Glen Ellen.
“It’s crazy how in just a few hours, a place I’ve recognized all my life I can’t recognize.”
Pimlott said the flames hit neighborhoods before residents even knew there was a fire.
“This is just pure devastation,” he said.