Verge of destruction
Fast moving fire threatens City of Sonora, Jamestown area
Cal Fire and U.S. Forest Service firefighters drove through flames and near zero visibility smoke on the south end of Southgate Drive south of the Mother Lode Fairgrounds before 3:30 p.m. Thursday to reach one of the hottest edges of a blaze that exploded near Highway 108 and prompted multiple mandatory evacuations.
Under smoke-choked blood red and orange tinted afternoon skies, with ash raining down from torching trees and 30-foot flame lengths at times, Sonora police officers and a lieutenant urged residents in the Southgate Drive neighborhood to get out immediately before 3 p.m.
Near the end of Southgate Drive, the advancing blaze threw up duplex condo-sized flames, hissing, heaving and roaring at times like a hungry beast. Pilots in tanker planes and helicopters worked close to the advancing flames and smoke, often disappearing from view in the black and gray clubs of soot, ash and debris boiling off the fire.
A man in a silver car drove near the flames and turned around before reaching a dip in the road where an oven of flames on both sides of the road glowed red.
Cal Fire and Forest Service personnel in separate vehicles waited for the flames to subside, then drove on through. As of 3:45 p.m. Thursday, the sounds of chainsaws were audible further south above the snapping, crackling blaze. Pilots continued dropping red retardant and slurries of water closer and closer to a fuel-free vantage point.
No flames from what dispatchers had dubbed the Washington Fire had advanced north on Southgate toward homes and other structures closer to the Mother Lode Fairgrounds.
The blaze prompted mandatory evacuations for the area of the city west of South Washington Street between Stockton Road and Highway 108, including the fairgrounds and adjacent neighborhood on Southgate Drive.
Other mandatory evacuation orders are in place for Alley
Drive, Circle Drive,
Golden Dove Lane, MCKibbin Drive, Golf Links Road, North Drive and Crooked Lane.
Evacuation advisories were in place for the rest of the City of Sonora, Jamestown Road and Racetrack Road.
An evacuation shelter was reportedly established at the Westside Pavilion off Tuolumne Road, according to an emergency notification through the county’s Everbridge alert system.
Deputy Niccoli Sandelin, spokesman for the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office, said the fire was 81 acres in size as of 5:15 p.m. Thursday and was holding within the containment zone. All evacuation zones remained in place, and he had no projections on how long until people would be allowed back.
“We’re still actively working with it,” he said.
A mass exodus from the city ensued when the fire jumped from the west to east side of Stockton Road near Highway 108 and evacuation advisories were announced. Traffic was clogged along main thoroughfares, including Washington Street, Stockton Road and Mono Way, along
with side streets like Stewart, Shepherd, and Lyons streets.
Downtown Sonora was eerily vacant about 5 p.m. There were very few if any cars parked along Washington Street and police officers manning a road closure at Restano Way and South Washington Street and directing vehicle traffic east onto Mono Way.
Earlier Thursday, before the fire near Highway 108 and Stockton Road broke out, Cal Fire and inmate crews were working the 700-acre Airola Fire that ignited Wednesday afternoon next to the upstream end of New Melones Reservoir, where the Stanislaus River flows into the reservoir.
Incident commander Battalion Chief John Zuniga, of the Cal Fire Tuolumne-calaveras Unit, was directing help at the Vallecito Conservation Camp on Six Mile Road, which served as the incident command post.
At the time, before the Washington Fire began, Sonora Fire Chief Aimee New talked with Zuniga about securing more hose for crews on the edges of the burned area.
Priorities for Thursday included keeping the fire within its existing footprint and getting crews in with hoses, Zuniga said.
Access to the fire was so challenging Wednesday that about 30 firefighters relied on boat shuttles from the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation from Glory Hole to the heel of the fire in the river canyon.
They were able to anchor the right flank of the fire at the Stanislaus River.
The cause was under investigation, with the point of origin somewhere near the river’s or reservoir’s high water mark. Cal Fire said the fire was reported at 2:55 p.m. off Parrotts Ferry Road near Airola Road, hence the name.
Mandatory evacuations and evacuation warning zones had not changed and remained in effect. Before noon, Zuniga said the hope was get everybody back home within 24 hours.
Unburned fuels were a concern because history showed a lot of fuel that has not burned in many years. The last burn scar Zuniga mentioned was the 2001 Darby Fire. There are several older burn scars.
Structures threatened by the blaze remained about 200 Thursday afternoon.