Wildfires whipped by gusting winds forced evacuations for more than 74,000 residents and warnings for thousands of others to be prepared to flee in Napa, Sonoma, Butte and Shasta counties, where firefighters battled several new blazes Monday and fought to keep control of an existing one.
As many as 35,000 Santa Rosa city residents were evacuated during a chaotic night as the Glass Fire and two conjoining blazes roared westward over the Mayacamas Mountains between Napa and Sonoma counties, burning an undetermined number of homes in two Santa Rosa neighborhoods, Skyhawk and Oakmont.
Sheriff’s deputies went door to door in the night, and reportedly conducted rescue operations involving some residents in the hills around Santa Rosa who initially refused to leave. Evacuation orders were expanded throughout Monday’s early morning hours both inside and outside of Santa Rosa city limits.
“The fire was moving fast, like the Tubbs Fire” of 2017 that destroyed more than 5,000 homes, said Sonoma Sheriff’s spokeswoman Misti Wood mid-morning Monday. “The initial chaotic moments have passed. But we are certainly not out of the woods yet.”
As of 5 p.m. Monday, the Glass Fire burned 36,236 acres and was 0% contained, said Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nichols during a news conference. He said better mapping and daylight allowed Cal Fire officials to determine the size the wildfire. The wildfire has destroyed 113 structures and damaged two others, according to Cal Fire.
Nichols said the wind in the area had weakened as forecast, which will create smokey conditions bad for air quality. But the calmer wind gives firefighters a better chance to gain an upperhand on the blaze.
“Our firefighters are holding the line, digging in and finding that inner strength to protect the communities that we have sworn an oath to do so,” Nichols said.
In a Monday afternoon update, Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said 33,870 residents in unincorporated towns had been evacuated, along with 14,624 other residents who were under evacuation warnings. Combined with the city of Santa Rosa, Essick said more than 68,000 people had been evacuated in the county.
“Many people in our communities have been impacted by wildfire, and yet again we have a wildfire forcing us to flee our homes,” Essick said in the video update posted on the Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page.
Wind gusts hit 70-plus miles per hour Sunday in coastal mountain tops. And fire danger remained high Monday in the wine country, notably on the eastern side of Santa Rosa, as well as in Butte County, amid continuing high winds that are expected to last throughout the day.
“There is no containment and there are multiple fronts,” Napa County emergency services official Janet Upton said Monday.
In Napa County, some structures burned overnight, including the Chateau Boswell winery and the Glass Mountain Inn, and Cal Fire was preparing for continued high winds through 9 p.m. Monday. About 6,000 Napa residents were required to evacuate as of Monday.
Several homes on Deer Park Drive were destroyed, as was the main building of Foothills Adventist Elementary school, which welcomed students back Sept. 14. Some buildings on the campus escaped damage and handmade signs on a fence thanked firefighters for doing what they could to save the school.
In Butte County, voluntary evacuations warnings remain in effect Monday morning in the towns of Paradise and Magalia, both of which were devastated by the Camp Fire two years ago, due to newly wind-whipped fires on the north flank of the North Complex fire near Highway 70 in the Feather River Canyon.
“Winds are blowing like crazy,” former Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said Monday morning. She had spent a sleepless night in her newly rebuilt home in town. But, she said, “everyone is telling us Paradise and Magalia are not in any danger at the present time. They are just waiting for the winds to die down later today.”
That blaze already sprinted at a furious pace earlier this month, during an earlier wind event, killing 15 people in communities just north of Lake Oroville. The large complex first ignited in mid-August by lightning.
And in Shasta County, the Zogg Fire that sparked Sunday afternoon has burned at 31, 237 acres southwest of Redding, threatening rural communities of several hundred people, according to Cal Fire. The Zogg Fire, as of Monday morning, was not threatening the city of Redding, officials said.
As of Monday evening, the Zogg Fire destroyed 146 structures and was threatening more than 1,500 others, according to Cal Fire. Firefighters, who continued to be challenged by strong wind, high temperatures and low humidity Monday, focused on structure defense and increasing containment lines in areas they could access, Cal Fire officials said.
3 deaths in the Zogg Fire
In a Monday afternoon update, Shasta County Sheriff Eric Magrini said three people died in the Zogg Fire. He did not provide any additional details on those deaths. Magrini said coroner officials were working to positively identify the bodies recovered and properly notify their families.
The sheriff urged residents to comply with evacuation orders. He said residents who try to stay to protect their homes only increase the burden on public safety officials who are trying to fight the wildfire and get others to safety.
“When you hear that order, evacuate immediately. Do not wait,” Magrini said during a 4 p.m. news conference Monday.
He said the fire was expanding, so the evacuation orders will expand, as well. Deputies were patrolling evacuated areas and responding to calls from families asking to check on their loved ones.
At 7 p.m. Monday, Cal Fire officials announced a mandatory evacuation order for the area from the fire line east to the Placer and Texas Springs roads intersection, which includes all homes on the south and north side of Placer Road to Texas Springs Road in Shasta County.
Glass Fire: Growing list of evacuations for Santa Rosa, Calistoga
A group of wildfires in the Napa-Sonoma area collectively called the Glass Fire quadrupled in reported size between Sunday evening and Monday morning, from 2,500 acres to 11,000 acres, according to Cal Fire. It is now threatening more than 8,500 structures, most of them homes, and is uncontained.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office issued another round of urgent evacuation orders just before 7:45 a.m. for three main areas: all of Trione-Annadel State Park; the zone just south of the state park and north of Bennett Valley Road, located southeast of Santa Rosa city limits; and the region bound by Petrified Forest Road and Porter Creek Road, west of the Napa-Sonoma county line.
Evacuation orders within the city of Santa Rosa included the neighborhoods of Skyhawk, Melita, Oakmont, Pythian and Stonebridge.
Cal Fire at 6 a.m. Monday said mandatory evacuations had been ordered in the Napa County city of Calistoga for everyone southeast of Lincoln Avenue, which makes up about one-third the city of roughly 5,000 people. The order includes all of the Chateau Calistoga mobile home park. By 7 p.m. Monday, the evacuation order was expanded for the city of Calistoga, Napa County officials announced.
“At this time there has been no damage or loss within the (Calistoga) city limits, but significant damage has occurred in the surrounding area,” county officials said Monday evening.
Calistoga residents were told that open evacuation routes included Highway 29 south and north, along with Highway 128 north.
Parts of St. Helena have been evacuated as well. Napa County emergency services officials said the fire had not entered the town of Calistoga or St. Helena as of Monday mid-morning, but remained in the hills near both towns.
“We are not out of the woods yet,” Napa spokeswoman Upton said, given ongoing wind gusts expected until about 9 p.m. Monday. “We need to get through this period.”
To the west of the Glass and Boysen fires, the eastern fringes of Santa Rosa were immediately threatened by the Shady Fire, which began Sunday evening.
“There have been numerous evacuations, that’s been going on through the night,” Cal Fire spokesman Tyree Zander said early Monday. “They have a rapid rate of spread, a dangerous rate of spread.”
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders at 2:08 a.m. Monday for neighborhoods along Highway 12 and southwest of the Napa and Sonoma county line, and urged residents to flee toward Sonoma due to “significant threat to life and property.”
“Highway 12 westbound is gridlocked,” the sheriff’s office said. “Check with your neighbors to ensure they know about this order if you have time.
“First responders are going door to door to assist people.”
Cal Fire said as of Monday morning that 1,070 firefighters are assigned to the Glass Fire. No injuries have been reported, and no estimates regarding destruction are yet available.
Damage to wineries and homes in Napa, Sonoma
At least two homes along the Silverado Trail, near Pratt Avenue, had been destroyed. The gas line from one of the houses was spewing flames Monday morning.
At the Napa Valley Reserve, a private wine club, winemaker Marco Grissi and two other men were spraying water onto the shake shingles on a building that houses three vintages of wine.
“There’s a lot of money in there,” he said as a Cal Fire crew arrived to help. “There’s $60 million in wine in there.”
Along Silverado trail and Howell Mountain Road in St. Helena, a half dozen evacuees were standing in the heavy smoke Monday morning wondering about the fate of homes they were forced out of the day before.
“Its burning actively up there,” said Lori Duarte, who owns a home built their in 1940 with her sister. “We can’t defend it with garden hoses, there’s just not enough water pressure.
“We know the house is still standing, but we don’t know that anybody is up there defending it. Really, there’s so much up here that hasn’t burned in such a long time.”
Her sister, Cathay Brink, said sheriff officials came through Sunday afternoon blaring their “high-low” sirens that warned residents they needed to evacuate.
“We had time to pack some photos,” she said.
Officials had closed down Howell Mountain Road, leaving residents to watch the firefight across a vineyard, where flames could be seen burning on a hillside.
Flames were burning in various places in the hilly neighborhood, blanketing the area with dense smoke. Duarte and Brink’s home was still standing.
Elizabeth Bailey didn’t sleep all night as she and others at her treatment center watched the orange glow over the hillsides outside Calistoga.
At 4 a.m., they decided it was time to go.
”The flames were creeping over the hill on all sides,” she said. “It was just this orange glow… Then we went around the back of the property and there was another one, and you could see flames.”
Her group spent three and a half hours stuck in traffic to get to Marin County, where they’re staying for the time being.
Sonoma sheriff’s officials issued a new evacuation order at 4:34 a.m. Monday because of “multiple fires on Los Alamos Road and St. Helena Road,” and said residents north of St. Helena Road, east of Calistoga Road and Petrified Forest Road and southwest of the Napa/Sonoma county line should leave immediately.
Patrice Viera, innkeeper at the Inn St. Helena in the center of that Napa Valley tourist town, evacuated late Sunday night when the heat and smoke from three nearby fires became intolerable.
“It was impossible to breathe,” she said Monday morning from Berkeley.
St. Helena police say the town was not damaged Sunday, even though fires whipped through that area on their way to Santa Rosa.
In Napa County, the Office of Emergency Services issued an evacuation order at 4:33 a.m. Monday for the area north of Bothe State Park to Diamond Mountain Road, and said Highway 29 was closed between Lincoln Avenue and Deer Park Road.
One resident wrote on the Sonoma sheriff’s page that they already had to contend with potential looters during the evacuation.
At 9:50 p.m. Sunday, the Napa County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders for unincorporated areas from the 2900 block of White Sulpher Springs Road, which is at the city limits of St. Helena, to the dead end and north to Spring Mountain Road. Evacuation warnings were also issued within St. Helena’s city limits, from Elmhurst Avenue to Madrona Avenue west of Highway 29 to the city limits. Updates from the Napa County Sheriff’s Office are available on its Facebook page.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered from 1650 South Whitehall Lane north to White Sulpher Springs Road west to the county line. Evacuations were also ordered by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office from St. Helena Road to Highway 12. Updates from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office are available on its Facebook page.
Santa Rosa officials issued evacuation orders for Calistoga North, Calistoga South / Skyhawk, Melita, Oakmont, Pythian and Stonebridge. A temporary evacuation point has been set up in Santa Rosa at A Place To Play, 2375 W. 3rd St. Updates to Santa Rosa’s evacuations are available on the city’s website.
Power out for tens of thousands near Glass Fire, PG&E says
Tens of thousands of PG&E customers are without power in portions of Napa and Sonoma counties Monday morning due to the Glass Fire.
PG&E North Bay spokeswoman Deanna Contreras posted to social media that approximately 37,000 homes and businesses have lost electricity “due to fire damage or requests from first responders to turn off power for safety.”
PG&E’s online outage map indicates 37,000 customers are without power, separate from tens of thousands of others who are without electricity across Northern California due to a current Public Safety Power Shutoff, implemented by the utility over the weekend in response to the same gusty winds that stoked the Glass Fire’s explosive spread.
The latest intentional outage by PG&E was initiated Sunday evening, expected to impact more than 50,000 customers across parts of Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Lake, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sierra, Sonoma and Yuba counties. The shutoff will continue at least through Monday evening, as red flag warning weather conditions continue. PG&E crews must visually inspect affected power lines for damage before restoring power.
North Complex: More Butte County evacuations for West Zone
In addition to the Wine Country fires, evacuations were being ordered in portions of Butte County for the North Complex Fire’s West Zone, which earlier this month largely destroyed the community of Berry Creek.
Evacuations were ordered late Sundayfor Pulga, Concow, Big Bend and Yankee Hill, where wind speeds remained high Monday morning.
Cal Fire officials reported they had sent more forces to the north side of that blaze, near Highway 70 in the Feather River Canyon, Monday to attempt to contain a flare-up that has prompted an evacuation warning in the nearby towns of Paradise and Magalia, both hard hit two years ago in the Camp Fire.
“There are miles of (bull)dozer lines already in place in that area from during and after the Camp Fire,” Cal Fire spokesman Rick Carhart said on Monday.
Cal Fire’s Butte unit in a Monday morning incident report said the West Zone’s fire containment lines “have been tested by the strong winds” that started Sunday, but “continue to hold.”
On the other end of the West Zone, improving conditions allowed Butte authorities to lift all evacuation and warnings for the areas of Feather Falls, Forbestown, Clipper Mills and all remaining areas south of Lake Oroville. Those communities are near the border with Yuba County, where officials announced all evacuations due to the West Zone have been lifted.
An evacuation order was also reduced to a warning for an area along the Oro-Quincy Highway, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said in social media posts around 10 a.m.
The North Complex Fire has burned 306,135 acres and is 78% contained as of Monday night, but winds throughout Northern California helped spark new blazes.
Butte County supervisor Bill Connelly said that as far as he knows, the fire hasn’t burned into any of the small towns under evacuation around the border between Butte and Yuba counties, but it’s imperative for local residents to heed the evacuation order.
”Because it’s so hard to get people out and many of them don’t have cell coverage. It’s mandatory, and they should take it seriously. Concow and Yankee Hill should take it very seriously … we’re really worried about Forbestown,”he said a couple of hours before the Forbestown evacuation was lifted.
Zogg Fire chews through thousands of acres in Shasta
A couple of hours north of the North Bay and Butte County wildfires, another severe incident ignited and grew furiously Sunday in Shasta County.
The Zogg Fire that erupted in Igo southwest of Redding has now consumed 15,000 acres, Cal Fire said Monday morning, after the fire grew from 50 to 7,000 acres in a matter of hours Sunday evening.
The blaze has forced evacuations for the areas immediately surrounding the fire. It remains uncontained.
The Redding Police Department tweeted early Monday that the Zogg Fire “is not an immediate threat to Redding.” Gusty winds have blown the fire away from the city, which in 2018 had more than one-third of its residents evacuated due to the deadly Carr Fire.
Where are evacuations ordered for Glass Fire, other California wildfires?
Mandatory evacuation orders for the Glass Fire, along with warnings for residents to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, continue to pour in from local emergency authorities throughout portions of Napa and Sonoma counties, including parts of the cities of Santa Rosa, St. Helena and Calistoga.
Detailed and up-to-date evacuation information is available through the emergency website Nixle, where the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, Napa County Office of Emergency Services, the city of Calistoga and the Santa Rosa Police Department are all providing frequent updates.
For the North Complex zone in Butte County, the evacuation situation relating to flaring activity on the fire remained mostly unchanged between Sunday evening and Monday morning: There are mandatory orders in place for the areas of Pulga, Concow, Big Bend and Yankee Hill; and there are warnings in place for Stirling City, Magalia and the entire town of Paradise.
At the Zogg Fire, Shasta County authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders for the area south of South Fork Road and Zogg Mine Road, south along Gas Point corridor including all residents along Gas Point Road to Foster Drive and Platina Road west to the Tehama County line.
‘Horrifying’: Sunday night fire evacuations stir up memories
The flurry of late-night and early-Monday morning evacuations, including streams of orders in Sonoma and Napa counties plus a warning encompassing the entire Butte County town of Paradise, bring back haunting memories for those who lived through raging wildfires that have struck Northern California in the past three years.
“It really is horrifying to see this happening … again,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said on social media. “Winds tonight are not expected to be as extreme as during Oct. 2017 North Bay (Tubbs) firestorm, but this does not look good. Really does appear this could make it to eastern Santa Rosa by morning.”
In another tweet, Swain suggested that evacuations were being outstripped by the speed of the fire, part of which is burning in an area that hasn’t seen a major fire in almost a century and is near where the 2017 Tubbs Fire decimated areas of Sonoma and Napa counties. “If you are on eastern side of Santa Rosa, I’d be prepared to leave in a matter of hours,” Swain added.
“This is extremely hard to say, but within past hour Butte County and Sonoma County officials have both issued nighttime emergency evacuation orders for some of the same areas previous burned by the Tubbs Fire in 2017 and Camp Fire in 2018. Please be vigilant tonight,” he added.
Climate change and California wildfires
Wildfires have always been part of life in California. The past four years have brought some of the most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the state’s modern history.
Nearly 180 people have lost their lives since 2017. More than 41,000 structures have been destroyed and nearly 7 million acres have burned – that’s roughly the size of Massachusetts.
So far this year, 26 people have died, according to Cal Fire.
Meanwhile, this year’s August was the hottest on record in California. A rare series of lightning storms sparked a series of fires, including the August Complex that has burned roughly 840,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in California’s recorded history.
Our climate is becoming more severe.
The 2017 wildfire season occurred during the second hottest year on record in California and included a devastating string of fires in October that killed 44 people and destroyed nearly 9,000 buildings in Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte and Solano counties.
The following year was the most destructive and deadliest for wildfires in the state’s history. It included the Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, and the enormous Mendocino Complex.
The Bee’s Rosalio Ahumada contributed to this story.
