Power is cut to reduce fire risk
PG& E cuts power to 65,000 in Northern California; evacuation orders are issued.
As flames rage across Napa County, PG& E makes a cautious decision.
SAN FRANCISCO — A fast- moving f ire in Napa County, home to the state’s signature wine region, forced evacuations north of the town of St. Helena on Sunday, as large swaths of Northern California faced dangerous fire weather and widespread power outages.
By Sunday night, the Glass fire had burned 2,500 acres about four miles northwest of St. Helena’s tony downtown and was burning “with a dangerous rate of spread,” according to the California Department
of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Crews were dispatched to the vegetation f ire at 3: 50 a. m., only to see it grow from 20 acres to 50 acres within 90 minutes, “and then from 50 acres to 800 acres within a four- hour period,” said Tyree Zander, public information officer for Cal Fire’s Napa Lake Sonoma Unit.
With no containment in sight Sunday night, red- f lag warnings in effect for much of Northern California and expected high wind gusts, Pacific Gas & Electric had cut power to 65,000 customers. The outages covered parts of 16 counties, including Napa, where the Glass fire is devouring dry brush at a rapid pace, and Butte, where the North Complex f ire has already torched more than 305,000 acres and caused the deaths of 15 people. The North Complex fire is 78% contained.
Power was expected to be restored, weather permitting, by Monday evening, utility officials said.
The Napa County Sheriff ’ s Office ordered mandatory evacuations Sunday along a stretch of the storied Silverado Trail, known for its Cabernet Sauvignons and prestigious wineries including Joseph Phelps Vineyards, ZD Wines and those in the Stags Leap District.
Glass f ire evacuation orders covered about 600 homes and an estimated 1,500 residents, said Janet Upton, public information officer for Napa County’s emergency operations center. An additional 1,400 homes, representing about 3,500 more people, were under evacuation warnings, and some 2,200 structures were threatened.
Adventist Health St. Helena hospital said it was suspending operations and evacuating its patients.
“We’re in close communication with f ire officials and began transferring some patients early this morning as a precaution,” Dr. Steven Herber, the hospital’s president, said in a statement.
Strike teams that included both ground and air ambulances took about 50 patients to other area hospitals, “out of an abundance of caution, knowing what we’ll be up against tonight,” when weather conditions were expected to deteriorate, Upton said Sunday.
On Sunday night, with the f ire moving quickly southwest toward Santa Rosa, Napa County officials expanded the mandatory evacuation zone to include a portion of the town of St. Helena on the southwestern side of Napa Valley, an area that includes a campus of the Culinary Institute of America, a renowned culinary college. The evacuation order means that the hills on both sides of Napa Valley, f lanking the towns of St. Helena and Calistoga, are threatened by fire.
Farther southwest, Sonoma County officials ordered mandatory evacuations of the Mayacamas Mountains west of St. Helena and into the eastern fringes of the city of Santa Rosa, including the site of the Juvenile Justice Center on Rancho Los Guilicos Road.
Within Santa Rosa, f irefighters warned residents in the Rincon Valley, Skyhawk and Los Alamos communities to be ready to evacuate.
New evacuation orders were also issued for the North Complex West Zone fire burning in Butte County, covering Pulga, Concow, Big Bend and Yankee Hill.
Napa County, supported by the American Red Cross, opened an evacuation center at Crosswalk Community Church in Napa. The center wasn’t sheltering people because of the coronavirus outbreak, but evacuees could go there to be placed in area hotels. About 150 people had taken advantage of the service as of Sunday afternoon, Upton said.
“This emergency operation center’s been stood up for the COVID response since March and we’ve been planning for what we call an incident within an incident, which is, for example, these wildfires,” Upton said. “And the planning’s paid off so we have the sheltering services in place to deal with basically wildfire in the time of COVID.”
Emergency officials were being particularly cautious when deciding what areas to evacuate because of the hot, dry and windy weather forecast for Sunday night, which raised fears of even more rapid fire growth and unpredictable behavior.
“We are preparing in advance for the winds,” Zander said. “So we’re going to be more precautious when it comes to evacuations and try to get those out ahead of time, to keep things rolling earlier than later.”
The f lames are gusting through steep, rugged terrain with limited access, which poses difficulties for f ire crews trying to get into the area and evacuees racing to safety. “A lot if it is oneway- in, one- way- out type of roads,” he said.
Separately, a fire that began in Shasta County — dubbed the Zogg f ire — had burned through 7,000 acres as of Sunday night, prompting additional evacuations.
Much of Northern California is under a red- f lag warning until 9 p. m. Monday, which means the National Weather Service is highly confident that dangerous f ire weather conditions will occur. Meteorologists warned about strong winds coming from the north and northeast, with gusts of up to 50 mph at the highest elevations, and critically low humidity.
“We’re expecting another round of gusty winds overnight tonight into tomorrow morning, mainly at higher elevations, so above 1,000 feet or so,” Anna Schneider, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey, said Sunday. “But we are also expecting some gusts below that of 20 to 30 mph.”
The conditions are the result of an area of high pressure that is sitting off the coast and expected to shift into the Pacific Northwest on Monday, creating an offshore f low that is bringing warmer and drier air over the land, Schneider said.
The f ire weather warnings were issued for areas including the North Bay and East Bay Hills, as well as the Bay Area’s interior valleys, the Sacramento Valley, the northern Sierra and mountainous areas of the North Coast.
The Bay Area is under a heat advisory until 7 p. m. Monday, as Diablo winds associated with the high- pressure system strengthening over the region are expected to bring yet another severe heat wave, the weather service said. The weather system is expected to cut off the typical afternoon cooling sea breeze and marine layer as hotter air comes in from the north and east.
“We’re in for 24 hours of potentially extreme fire conditions if they materialize as forecasted, and the National Weather Service is pretty good at their job,” Upton said. “So we are planning for the worst but hoping for the best.”
California has seen more than 3.7 million acres burn so far this year, causing the deaths of at least 26 people. Five of the six largest wildf ires in California’s modern record were fires ignited this year, and they’re still burning, according to Cal Fire.
The largest f ire, the August Complex f ire burning north of the Bay Area in and around Tehama County, has burned more than 873,000 acres and is 43% contained. One f irefighter battling the August Complex f ire has died. Though the f ire has been burning since mid- August, new evacuation orders were issued Sunday for parts of Mendocino and Trinity counties, and new warnings were issued for part of Humboldt County.
The Creek f ire in Fresno and Madera counties, which burned through the Sierra National Forest and forced the air evacuation of hundreds of campers cut off by f lames, is 39% contained after burning more than 300,000 acres.
And in the Bay Area, the LNU Lightning Complex and SCU Lightning Complex fires, which respectively burned in the North Bay and east of Silicon Valley, are both 98% contained.
The LNU Lightning Complex f ire burned more than 363,000 acres and resulted in five deaths, and the SCU Lightning Complex fire charred more than 396,000 acres.