Inferno’s threat grows
Desperate battle: Firefighters try to keep blaze from racing to coast
After four days of destruction, the Kincade Fire went from bad to worse, Sunday: A growing legion of firefighters lost ground on containment, homes and wineries burned to the ground, and a growing number of Sonoma County residents fled, only to flee again when the fire followed.
The blaze was the biggest of nearly a dozen fires that burned across the state Sunday as tens of thousands of people suddenly found themselves seeking emergency refuge not just from fire, but from loss of electric power and mandatory evacuations.
More than 3,400 firefighters and other personnel battled the Kincade Fire. A force amassed outside Windsor to try to keep the flames from roaring over Highway 101, possibly setting off a hellish rampage that could reach the Pacific Ocean.
Ferocious winds reaching nearly 100 mph over the weekend turned the 50,000acre Kincade Fire into a blast furnace that had destroyed 94 structures, including at least three dozen homes. While fierce
winds were expected to die down Monday, firefighters were bracing for strong gusts to resume Tuesday into Wednesday.
The fire nearly doubled in size Sunday despite the numerous air tankers, dozens of bulldozers and more than 350 engine crews hopscotching across the region in an effort to get the upper hand on the blaze. More than 54,000 acres — 84 square miles — had burned by late Sunday, with hillsides blackened and vineyards, normally resistant to flames, scorched in places across the Anderson Valley.
Containment of the fire had dipped to 5%, down from 10% percent earlier in the day. Two firefighters were injured, including one who was airlifted to UC Davis with burns. Cal Fire estimated that the fire would not be fully contained until Nov. 7.
“We’re in the heart of the battle with this fire,” said Cal Fire Division Chief Jonathan Cox. “To say the conditions are a tinderbox is probably an understatement.”
More than 180,000 people had been evacuated, filling six of 10 designated shelters, including some operating without power as Pacific Gas & Electric Co. shutoffs continued to affect nearly 1 million customers across Northern California.
Mother and daughter Becky and Joan said they left their their home on the west side of Santa Rosa Saturday morning and headed to the Finley Community Center, only to be evacuated from there just 90 minutes later. With other shelters already full, they went to what they thought was an open site, but it was locked.
“We we’re trying to navigate the streets with no traffic lights,” said Becky, who, with her mother, declined to give their last names, fearing their personal information could be abused. “We ended up in a parking lot in the dark in our car.” On Sunday, they made their way to the Petaluma Fairgrounds.
“It’s scary. It’s very scary,” Joan said. “For me it’s unnerving because we don’t know when we can go back.”
Joann Gudzus, 72, was at the
Santa Rosa shelter with her daughter, soninlaw and 7yearold granddaughter Susanna Hicklin. Gudzus teared up as she talked about the possibility of losing her family’s home in Santa Rosa, which was full of heirlooms. The fires, she said, feel apocalyptic. She’s thought about moving, but her roots are deep in Santa Rosa.
“I told my daughter, if the house burns down, I’ll kill my self,” Callahan said.
“Don’t say that,” her daughter Jill McCulloch said.
Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick sympathized with the tens of thousands of people displaced, but said he had no regrets about ordering evacuations.
“That seen any area fire hasn’t history since the 1940s. We’ve got rates of spread that are extremely dangerous at this point with erratic fire behavior.”
Steve Volmer, fire behavior analyst for Cal Fire
“When this fire decides to make a run and the winds push it, you can’t win,” he said. “We lost 24 people in 2017. There is absolutely no reason to lose a human life here.”
Not everyone abided by Essick’s order. The town of Windsor was empty Sunday except for Mike Costlow, who stayed so he could lug a 250footlong fire hose from house to house in his neighborhood.
There were no flames in the neighborhood, just clouds of smoke, but Costlow sweated and panted as he deftly maneuvered the hose, which he had borrowed from a retired fireman and attached to the nearby fire hydrant.
“It’s preventative,” he said. “I have too much to lose. I’m a new business owner and all my tools are in the house. It’s just impossible to lose everything.”
Elsewhere Sunday, a fire in Lafayette forced residents to evacuate and badly damaged a tennis club near Highway 24. Fires on each side of the Carquinez Strait — one in Vallejo and one in Crockett — sent thick smoke across the bay Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, the second biggest fire in the state, known as the Tick Fire, burned 4,615 acres in Los Angeles, damaged or destroyed 49 structures, and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
After the last two fire seasons, during which more than 100 people died, entire neighborhoods in Santa Rosa burned and the town of Paradise (Butte County) was destroyed, the series of fires caused nervousness up and down the state that the next big fire disaster was at hand.
Gov. Gavin Newsom Sunday extended the state of emergency for Sonoma County to a statewide emergency because of the “unprecedented’ wind that blew embers more than a mile ahead of the main conflagration near Geyserville and forced fire crews to rush around extinguishing scores of spot fires. The declaration will help pay for the Kincade, Tick and other fires burning in the state.
Newsom said fires and power shutoffs “make for a moment in our history that we hope we don’t have to repeat.”
“The fires we’re experiencing are not completely abnormal,” he said. “What makes this moment so different are the shutoffs that overlay it. And that’s where obviously people are feeling even more stress.”
San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a local emergency to provide mutual aid for those affected by the fire, in