More wildfires prompt evacuation orders for 50,000
SANFRANCISCO » Northern California’s wine country was on fire again Monday as strong winds fanned flames in the already scorched region, prompting evacuation orders involving more than 50,000 people.
Residents of the Oakmont Gardens assistedliving home in Santa Rosa boarded brightly lit city buses overnight, some wearing bathrobes and using walkers. They wore masks to protect against the coronavirus as orange flames marked the dark sky.
Flames also engulfed the Chateau Boswell Winery north of St. Helena. The Adventist Health St. Helena hospital suspended care and transferred all patients elsewhere, according to a statement on its website.
“We just don’t have words,” state Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents Healdsburg, told KTVU-2 in Oakland. “It’s an incredibly trying and emotional time right now.”
The fires that began Sunday in the famed Napa-Sonoma wine country north of San Francisco came on the third anniversary of deadly wildfires that erupted in 2017, including one that killed 22 people.
The latest inferno began with the Glass Fire at 3:50 a.m. Sunday, andtwo subsequent fires merged with it, burning 17 square miles as of early Monday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
More than 53,000 people in Sonoma and Napa counties were under evacuation orders, said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director with Cal Fire. Many more were warned that they may have to flee.
Paul Lowenthal, another
Cal Fire spokesman, said more than 13,000 homes were threatened in Santa Rosa alone.
“In some parts of Santa Rosa, they’re mopping up hot spots,” he said. “In other parts, they’re still actively fighting fire.”
Surreal situation
Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin evacuated her home in the Oakmont community of Santa Rosa about 1 a.m. She is rebuilding a home damaged in the 2017 fires. Gorin told the San Francisco Chronicle that she is numb, and the situation feels surreal.
“It’s like God has no sympathy, no empathy for Sonoma County,” she told the newspaper.
Evacuationswere also ordered in Shasta County as the Zogg Fire spread over 23 square miles. Residences are widely scattered in the forested area, about 10 miles southwest of the city of Redding in the region torched just two years ago by the massive and deadly Carr Fire, infamously remembered for producing a huge tornado-like firewhirl.
The causes of the new fires were under investigation.
Numerous studies in recent years have linked bigger wildfires in America to global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, especially because climate change has made California much drier. A drier California means plants are more flammable.
Weather woes
The latest fires erupted as a giant ridge of high pressure settled over the West, producing powerful gusts blowing from the interior toward the coast while slashing humidity levels and raising temperatures, making vegetation ready to burn.