Firefighters were bracing for another round of Diablo winds in Northern California this week, days after monster winds topping 90 mph ripped through the area, making it difficult for officials to make any progress on the growing Kincade fire.
Santa Rosa residents were forced to evacuate in darkness early Sunday amid Pacific Gas & Electric Co. power outages, using flashlights and cellphones as light sources. The number of evacuated residences had increased to 185,000, said Jay Tracy, a spokesman with the California Department of Forestry & Fire Protection.
The fire grew almost 12,000 acres overnight into Monday and remained at just 5% containment as firefighters entered their fifth day battling the blaze. At least 96 structures have been destroyed, including 40 homes.
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A charred utility pole lies amid burned machinery along Chalk Hill Road near Healdsburg on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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A house burns along Highway 128 near Healdsburg on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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Charred hillsides show the path of the Kincade fire next to vineyards near Healdsburg. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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Vehicles burned by the Kincade fire along Chalk Hill Road near Healdsburg. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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A Cal Fire vehicle drives past a smoldering eucalyptus tree along Chalk Hill Road near Healdsburg on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2019. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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The Soda Rock winery along Highway 128 near Healdsburg is consumed by the Kincade fire early Sunday morning. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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The Soda Rock winery along Highway 128 near Healdsburg is consumed by the Kincade fire early Sunday morning. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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A pair of men open a gate to allow firefighters access to a ranch along Highway 128 near Healdsburg as the Kincade fire flares up early Sunday morning. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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Near Healdsburg, Calif., a firefighter along Highway 128 observes the Soda Rock winery being consumed by the Kincade fire early Sunday morning. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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Smoke from the Kincade fire partially obscures the sun as it rises above Chalk Hill Road near Healdsburg on Sunday morning. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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The Soda Rock winery along State Highway 128 near Healdsburg, Calif., is consumed by the Kincade fire early Sunday morning. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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A firefighter mops up hot spots from the Kincade fire after it jumped Chalk Hill Road near Healdsburg, Calif., on Sunday morning. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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A police cruiser patrols downtown Healdsburg, where power was cut ahead of expected high winds early Sunday morning. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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Shopkeepers Sodhi Singh, left, and Navneet Singh prepare to close down their gas station and convenience store after the lights went out in Healdsburg at about 8 p.m. Saturday night. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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Downtown Healdsburg is deserted after a mandatory evacuation of the town was ordered on Saturday ahead of an expected high wind event in the area. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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Traffic jams Dry Creek Road in Healdsburg after authorities ordered the evacuation of the city on Saturday. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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A Boeing 747 supertanker drops a large load of fire retardant on a ridgeline above Healdsburg on Saturday. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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Firefighters set a back fire in the hills above Healdsburg on Saturday. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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Rosalia Schmidt (left) and Pamela Hardine look at a neighbor’s burned home from the Tick fire in Santa Clarita. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
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Rosalia Schmidt thanks Los Angeles County Fire Department hand crew members in Canyon Country. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
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A Los Angeles County Fire Department hand crew lines up to do mop up work at the Tick fire in Canyon Country. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
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Pamela Hardine sweeps ash from her home next to neighbors’ homes that burned from the Tick fire in Canyon Country. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
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Homes on Arches Lane in Canyon Country are pink from fire retardant. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
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Cal Fire personnel look over burnt hills in Canyon Country due to the Tick Fire. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
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Marrin unpacks clothes from his car in Canyon Country as residents returned to their homes. Marrin said he packed his car but didn’t evacuated and helped put out fires. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
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Los Angeles County Fire Department Superintendent Brian Riley walks through a burnt hill due to the Tick fire in Canyon Country. (Michael Owen Baker/For The Times)
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Firefighters battle a mulch fire at a nursery along Sierra Highway in Santa Clarita. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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Ventura County firefighter Zach Ary douses a smoldering residence in Santa Clarita. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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A huge plume of smoke rises from the Kincade fire in the hills around Geyserville. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
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Firefighters spray water on a home destroyed by the Tick fire in the 29000 block of Sequoia Road in Santa Clarita. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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A fire crew makes its way down the closed 14 Freeway in Santa Clarita. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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A house is covered in pink fire retardant on Arches Lane in Santa Clarita. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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Firefighters work the hills near Santa Clarita, laying containment lines. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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The closed 14 Freeway in Santa Clarita. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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Firefighters douse hot spots at two charred homes along Red Wine Road in Geyserville on Friday morning. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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A charred vehicle sits along Red Wine Road in Geyserville on Friday morning with lights from firefighting vehicles visible in the background. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
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A structure continues to burn after the Kincade fire moved through the Geyserville area. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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In a long-exposure image, firefighters climb a burned hillside to put out hot spots with a hose line behind homes off Nearview Drive Thursday night. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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In a long-exposure image, firefighters work behind homes off Nearview Drive. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Firefighters with the Los Padres Strike Team monitor flames burning on a hillside off Sierra Highway in Agua Dulce. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
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Firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the Sepulveda Basin. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Santa Monica city firefighters hose down embers from the Tick fire near Agua Dulce. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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David Leventhal monitors flames burning on a hillside near his home in Agua Dulce. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
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A plane drops fire retardant on hillside flames in Agua Dulce. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
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Firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the Sepulveda Basin. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Helicopters fly into the Sepulveda Basin to fill up with water to battle a brush fire Thursday. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the Sepulveda Basin. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the Sepulveda Basin. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the Sepulveda Basin. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the Sepulveda Basin. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the Sepulveda Basin. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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People leave the Sepulveda Basin as firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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Firefighters battle a brush fire that broke out Thursday afternoon in the Sepulveda Basin. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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A building is engulfed in flames at a vineyard during the Kincade fire near Geyserville. (Josh Edelson / AFP/Getty Images)
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Charred grapevines are seen after the Kincade fire moved through the Geyserville area. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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A home burns near a vineyard after the Kincade fire burned through the area in Geyserville. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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A burned car sits next to a swing after the Kincade fire moved through the area in Geyserville. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images )
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Firefighters confer while battling the Kincade fire near Geyserville. Portions of Northern California remain in the dark after Pacific Gas & Electric cut power to prevent the sparking of wildfires during dry and windy conditions. (Noah Berger / Associated Press)
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A firetruck heads toward flames of the Kincade fire near Geyserville. The fire broke out in spite of rolling blackouts by utility companies in both Northern and Southern California. (Josh Edeleson /AFP/Getty Images)
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Flames approach a vineyard during the Kincade fire near Geyserville, Calif. (Josh Edelson /AFP/Getty Images)
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Embers and smoke spread over a hillside during the Kincade fire near Geyserville, Calif. (Josh Edelson / AFP/Getty Images)
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High winds fuel the Kincade fire near Geyserville, Calif. (Kent Porter / Press Democrat)
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Photographers documenting the Kincade fire leave as the fire approaches Geysers Road in Sonoma County. (Kent Porter / Press Democrat)
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Cows stand on a hill during the Kincade fire in Geyserville, Calif. Fueled by high winds, the fire has burned thousands of acres in a matter of hours and has prompted evacuations in the area. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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The Kincaide fire burns a hillside in Geyserville, Calif. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images )
One firefighter suffered a minor burn and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, officials said Monday. Another who was burned more seriously was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. No deaths have been reported in the massive blaze.
Winds are expected to pick up again Tuesday and reach their peak in the evening, with gusts up to 70 mph, said Spencer Tangen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Fortunately, this should be the last bump in the road for firefighters — at least for this week, Tangen said. Forecasters haven’t detected any more strong wind events into early next week.
Overnight, the 66,231-acre fire swept south of the town of Windsor on Shiloh Ridge, where homes were burned, although it was unclear how many structures were lost. Many more remain threatened, according to Cal Fire officials.
Firetrucks lined the entrance to the Mayacama Golf Course, where the fire had advanced Sunday night after passing over Shiloh Ridge Road. Through a thick blanket of smoke, firefighters worked to build a perimeter. With narrow roads lining hilly terrain pocked by homes and expansive vineyards, it was no easy task. At a morning briefing in Santa Rosa, firefighters were warned to watch for fallen trees on the road and downed power lines.
“Watch your speeds,” Cal Fire officials told their crews.
“We’ve been chasing this fire for the last four days. We finally got the break in the weather,” Ben Nichols, a Cal Fire division chief, said during the briefing. “We have to get out there and get this thing buttoned up and put it to bed.”
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Firefighters aimed to take advantage of calm winds on Monday. Crews are being deployed to protect homes while those on the fire’s perimeter work aggressively to add containment lines, specifically in the northeastern and northwestern areas of the fire. Aircraft plan to drop water and fire retardant on the difficult-to-access terrain.
The fire has been as much a challenge for residents as it has for firefighters. Many are still recovering from the Tubbs fire in 2017 that devastated Santa Rosa, killing 22 people and destroying homes.
Those who lost their houses are struggling with difficult memories while navigating evacuations in darkness during what has been PG&E’s largest power shut-off yet.
To make matters worse, nighttime temperatures are beginning to drop in the North Bay valleys, with temperatures decreasing to the low 30s in Santa Rosa, Tangen said.
“You don’t really think about the cold [during fires] ... but that’s going to be really hard on people” who don’t have power, Tangen said.
Monday’s weather allowed PG&E to begin inspecting the lines affected by power outages. PG&E said 6,000 people were conducting inspections on equipment, working as quickly as possible to make repairs where needed and restore power.
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But more outages are possible with Tuesday’s winds, the utility said.
Warnings and evacuation orders for Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties.
(Los Angeles Times)
In Santa Rosa, Honora Clemens, 93, was up monitoring the fire on television Sunday when she saw lights go out on a block of nearby homes. The smoke was heavy, but she hadn’t seen any embers as she did when she fled the Tubbs fire. She hadn’t been ordered to leave yet.
Then her television screen froze. Suddenly she felt cut off and panicked. How would she know if there were an order to evacuate?
She and her daughter packed up and left, driving to the fairgrounds, where they knew the routine: They had spent 10 smoky days there in 2017.
Not everyone left, though.
Mike Birleffi, of Windsor, chose to ignore Sunday night’s mandatory evacuation orders out of a commitment to “home protection, ignorance and stubbornness,” he said, standing barefoot in jeans and a denim vest on the edge of his driveway Monday morning.
There was also, as he put it, “the overinflated sense of self worth” that had kept him on his three acres of land, where the 63-year-old self-employed carpenter has lived for 33 years.
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He stood next to a hand-painted sign that read, “Thank you first responders,” in red paint.
“I made it during the last fire. I’m a recycling buff,” he said.
He had gotten a few hours of sleep Sunday night, but not much. He spent the evening in his driveway, looking north as the flames flared up in the hills.
“It looked kind of like some kind of biblical prophesy,“ he said.
Despite law enforcement’s insistence that residents stay out of evacuation zones, Windsor resident Gil Laroucherie drove back to his ranch in the pre-dawn hours Monday.
Laroucherie, 78, had evacuated his 53 horses to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds on Sunday and spent the night parked near them, barely sleeping in his white Ford F-150 pickup truck. But as morning approached, he felt the need to check on his ranch.
“I knew pretty well what I was gonna see, but the realism of seeing it, it takes you back a bit,” he said of his drive from the fairgrounds back toward the flames. The streets were empty, except for several parked emergency vehicles.
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He was relieved when he finally reached his ranch and found it unharmed. He stopped for gas-station coffee at one of the lone holdouts still serving before heading back to his horses.
As firefighters fought against winds Sunday morning, three new fires broke out in eastern Contra Costa County — two in Oakley along the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and one in a small, rural neighborhood of Clayton east of Mt. Diablo.
Then, mid-morning, a fire erupted in Vallejo and sent embers across the Carquinez Strait to light a new blaze in Contra Costa County, in the hills around Crockett.
A sign reads “you loot we shoot” in a Sonoma County evacuation zone.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has been sharply critical of the CPUC and PG&E, whose “greed” and “mismanagement” he says have contributed to the fires and shut-offs across the state.
Newsom has declared a statewide emergency and announced last week the state secured $75 million for areas affected by power shut-offs. Half would be allocated to local governments, with the cities of Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and Oakland receiving $500,000 each.
The money can be used to purchase equipment for planned shut-offs, such as generators, fuel storage and other backup energy sources.
A team with the Federal Emergency Management Agency is embedded in the California Office of Emergency Services. More than 100 firetrucks have come from states outside of California, according to officials with the state department of emergency services.
Newsom said the state has offered resources to PG&E to enable quicker line inspections and power restoration in Northern California.
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Two arrests have been made amid the Northern California blazes. A man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of attempting to enter a burned area with criminal intentions, according to Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick. A woman was arrested on suspicion of arson after authorities said she set fire to a home. Essick said that crime was an isolated incident targeting an individual and not related to the bigger fires.
Sheriff’s officials said repopulation efforts in Sonoma County would begin soon, with the most recent evacuees being given the OK to return home first.
Alejandra Reyes-Velarde is a Metro reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Previously she wrote for the San Francisco Business Times and the Sacramento Bee. A UCLA graduate, she is originally from Duarte, Calif., and is a native Spanish speaker.
Melody Gutierrez is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she covered state government and politics for The Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee. Gutierrez has written award-winning government accountability stories on wasteful spending, pension spiking, rape kit backlogs and failures in the foster care system.
Julia Wick is a political reporter at the Los Angeles Times. She and her colleagues won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for reporting on a leaked audio recording that upended Los Angeles politics. She was also part of the team that was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist for work covering a fatal shooting on the set of the film “Rust.” Before joining the Times, Wick was the editor in chief of LAist.
Colleen Shalby is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She has covered education, the pandemic, the vaccine rollout and breaking news throughout California. She was part of the team that was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist for coverage of a dive-boat fire off the Santa Barbara coast. Shalby grew up in Southern California and graduated from George Washington University. She previously worked for PBS NewsHour and joined The Times in 2015.
