San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
90,000 ordered to leave homes
sive Tubbs Fire in October 2017.
The fire, which began Wednesday and was being battled by more than 2,000 firefighters, was just 11% contained Saturday night. It had destroyed 77 structures, including 31 homes, and damaged 14. Another 23,500 structures were threatened.
No deaths have been been reported. Two civilians and one firefighter sustained nonlifethreatening injuries Friday after the firefighter deployed his personal fire shelter to save himself and the two fleeing residents.
“We’re kind of at the mercy of Mother Nature right now,” said Cal Fire Public Information Officer Jonathan Cox. “Batten down the hatches and hope the storm passes.”
Helicopters and airplanes helped 68 fire crews on the ground in a frantic race to make as much progress as possible before winds of up to 80 miles per hour were expected to arrive Saturday night to make the battle even more treacherous.
National Weather Service meteorologist Drew Peterson said the area experienced “extreme, extreme conditions.” The strongest gusts were expected to pick up around midnight and continue into early Sunday.
The highest velocity winds were expected in the hills and ridges. They will be more intense and last longer than the winds that pushed the devastating 2017 fires in Wine Country, Peterson said.
In a lastditch effort to halt the progress of the fire before the winds picked up, hundreds of firefighters aided by airplanes and helicopters preemptively burned vast stretches of grassland to create a fire break.
The backfires, many set along Pine Flat Road east of Geyserville as the sun went down, were designed to create a buffer zone between the fire and the many towns of the Sonoma Valley.
“We want to make sure it doesn’t go down any farther,” said Capt. Mike Tompkins of the Tiburon Fire Department.
His crew was part of a team using drip torches to light dry brush and grass on fire. Another team, high on a ridge above, was lighting fires back toward Tompkins’ team so that the flames from both sides would merge and create one big fuel break.
Asked if it would work, Tompkins raised crossed fingers and said, “we’ll find out.” In Healdsburg and Windsor early Saturday, residents and businesses rushed to pack up and get out of town.
Danielle Kuller, the manager at Amy’s Wicked Slush ice cream store in Healdsburg, said the store shut down and sent employees home.
“We’re just trying to make sure everyone’s safe,” Kuller said.
At KC’s American Kitchen in Windsor, dozens of breakfast customers watched the sheriff ’s press conference on the restaurant TV and found out the town was being evacuated.
“They all paid their checks and left,” said Sheryl Farmer, the restaurant manager. “The restaurant is empty now. Our staff is worried and frantic. They’re all trying to get home to be with their families. It’s a little stressful.”
Traffic picked up and lines formed at gas stations as residents hit the roads out of town. By afternoon, the only people still allowed in Windsor were law enforcement personnel putting barriers on roads, driving through neighborhoods with loudspeakers and sirens, and going door to door to reach residents.
“It was nuts,” said Brian Benn, who waited 15 minutes to fill up at a gas station in north Santa Rosa, just outside the evacuation area, where he said the line behind each pump was six cars deep. “You can tell people are feeling a little panicked, and trying to get their stuff together.”
PG&E shut-off zones
Mandatory evacuation area
About 90 people under a previous mandatory evacuation order from the Geyserville area spent Friday night at the emergency shelter at the Healdsburg Community Center, Red Cross spokeswoman Barbara Wood said. But by Saturday, the evacuation shelter was itself evacuated.
Down the road, Jorge Vazquez, 31, who works in the maintenance department at the Best Western Dry Creek Inn in Healdsburg, was tasked with going door to door telling guests to leave. Each was given 30 minutes. Many were evacuees from the Geyserville area forced to make their second evacuation in three days.
“It took some convincing to get them to leave,” Vazquez said. In one case, he said, he had to threaten to call the police.
New evacuation centers were opened at the veterans halls in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, and at the Petaluma Fairgrounds.
Firefriendly weather condi
Evacuation warning areas tions affected much of Northern California, where as many as 940,000 customers were expected to lose electricity in planned Pacific Gas & Electric Co. power outages designed to prevent the outbreak of additional fires.
With what forecasters called a “potentially historic” windstorm Saturday night into Sunday, PG&E began shutting off power to as many as 2.8 million people across huge swaths of the state in an attempt to avert catastrophic wildfires.
The utility said homes and businesses could lose power in portions of 38 counties across the Bay Area and throughout Northern and Central California.
“The next 72 hours will be challenging,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a Napa event Saturday. “I could sugarcoat it, but I will not.”
The planned outages were unprecedented, affecting far more people than the previous two. In the last widespread round of planned outages this month, 738,000 residences and businesses in Northern and Central California had their electricity cut off.
The first blackouts began Saturday afternoon, affecting portions of counties in Northern California and the Sierra foothills — Amador, Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Glenn, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, San Joaquin, Sierra, Siskiyou, Shasta, Tehama and Yuba counties. They later spread to the Bay Area, affecting Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.
“It almost feels like an apocalypse,” said Armand Quintana, manager at Jackson’s Hardware in San Rafael. “There are lines at the gas station, people are buying ice from grocery stores, they’re out of ice. I’m looking for zombies.”
The store ran out of its stock of 50 generators, which sell for $1,100 to $5,000. Just hours before the expected power outages Saturday, it ran out of flashlights, batteries, candles and other poweroutage supplies. A few straggling customers asking for generators were turned away.
Smoke from the blaze was wafting through the Bay Area and could be sniffed on Saturday in downtown San Francisco.
Air quality experts advised that buying masks and filters is no substitute for finding cleanair spaces, such as libraries and shopping malls. “Masks may not be the answer for a lot of people,” said Dr. Jan Gurley of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “Sometimes they make you feel a little better. But there are no substitutes for getting to where the air is clean.”
Air quality throughout the
Kincade Fire
Start: Size: Containment:
Origin:
Bay Area was expected to be “unhealthy for sensitive groups” and a Spare the Air Day was declared by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. It was the 20th of 2019, compared with 13 days in all of 2018, 18 days in 2017 and 27 days in 2016. Residents were advised to limit outdoor activity and avoid driving and woodburning.
The blaze has been burning in a southwesterly direction on the east side of Highway 128 and eastern Geyserville. Firefighters built containment lines on the edge of Geyserville, where 735 structures were under threat.
Newsom toured the devastation Friday, visiting residents, meeting local officials and praising firefighters for their “extraordinary heroism.” The governor also stepped up his criticism of PG&E as state regulators look into whether the utility company’s equipment played a role in the fire.
The company told state regulators Thursday that equipment on a transmission tower broke near the origin point shortly before the Kincade Fire was reported at about 9:25 p.m. Wednesday. That’s despite the fact that power had been shut off in the area — but not on that transmission line — in an effort to prevent such an event.
Kurtis Alexander and Steve Rubenstein are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com and srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander, @SteveRubeSF