NEARLY 50,000 FLEE GLASS FIRE
North Bay homes and wineries burn
SANTA ROSA >> A fast-moving wildfire tore across Napa and Sonoma counties in the early hours of Monday morning has destroyed homes on the eastern edge of this city and forced nearly 50,000 residents to flee, many in hasty late-night evacuations, as firefighters struggled to protect neighborhoods in the path of the flames.
The Glass Fire, the largest in the Bay Area and one of 27 blazes currently burning around California, swelled to 11,000 acres with zero containment as of Monday morning, according to CalFire. More than 8,000 new acres burned overnight.
The blaze is made up of three
fires that merged late Sunday and raced across the landscape, driven by strong winds overnight. The devastation spread from the eastern slope of the Napa Valley outside St. Helena, across the mountains dividing Sonoma and Napa counties, and into the suburban neighborhoods of eastern Santa Rosa.
No injuries had yet been reported, but more than 8,500 structures remain under threat from the flames with hot and dry conditions forecast to continue through the day, fire officials said. Heavy smoke also forced fire crews to pause their aerial attack because of limited visibility.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday afternoon that a “substantial” number of structures had been destroyed in the fire, though authorities have not yet tallied the losses. Ten homes had been destroyed along Mountain Hawk Drive in Santa Rosa’s Skyhawk Community, and several more homes and wineries appeared to be damaged else
where in Napa and Sonoma counties Monday.
Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner said he could not quantify the number of homes destroyed in the Santa Rosa area but that there was “significant loss between Los Alamos and Oakmont on the north side of Highway 12.”
More than 1,000 firefighters had been called in by Monday morning — a stark relief from the strained staffing in the initial hours and days fighting the CZU, LNU and SCU Lightning Complex fires in August, when a barrage of lightning strikes sparked dozens of fires that burned more than a million acres.
“With a fire like this, I
can’t stress enough that there is never enough resources to do what you need to do what you need,” Gossner said. “So, as much as we scraped to get as many resources at many levels, you only have so many so you use them to the best of your
ability.”
But fire teams remain stretched thin across the state, as California enters the peak of its fire season. In addition to the fires in Napa and Sonoma County, the Zogg Fire, in Shasta County, also erupted overnight and prompted more evacuations just west of Redding, according to CalFire, which said the blaze had grown to 15,000 acres with zero containment as of Monday morning.
And in Butte County, winds forced authorities to order new evacuations for the North Complex Fire, which tore through the region Sept. 8 and has since killed 15 people. The evacuation orders include areas devastated by 2018’s Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history.
In the North Bay, the Glass Fire prompted evacuation orders that began Sunday afternoon around the communities of Deer Park and St. Helena but expanded overnight to include the areas of Silverado, Melita and Stonebridge.
Flames threatened the
Oakmont neighborhood just east of Santa Rosa, home to a huge retirement community, forcing the late-night evacuation of thousands of seniors. The orders reached as far west as Mark Springs Road to the west and Porter Creek Road to the north as of early Monday. Closer to downtown Santa Rosa, residents of Spring Lake, Summerfield and Middle Rincon were also ordered to flee.
Many Santa Rosa residents who fled their homes in the early morning hours Monday described a process both terrifying and familiar. The Glass Fire tore across the hillsides east of Santa Rosa, driven southwest by the wind on path reminiscent to that of the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which swept through neighborhoods just a few miles away.