Northern California fire grows to 74,300 acres as crews battle shifting winds

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A man walks past a burning home during the Getty fire, Oct. 28, 2019, in Los Angeles, Calif. (AP Photo/ Christian Monterrosa)

Shifting winds and dry air frustrated efforts Monday to beat back the massive Kincade Fire that’s cutting a destructive path through Northern California’s wine country. The fire has prompted the evacuations of nearly 200,000 people as it menaces the population hub of Santa Rosa.

By Monday night, the blaze had engulfed more than 74,300 acres in Sonoma County - an area larger than the city of Sacramento - up from 66,200 acres earlier in the day. Fire officials said they had contained just 15 percent of the blaze.

Firefighters got a brief reprieve in the late morning and afternoon when gusts died down, but struggled to keep pace with the expanding blaze as winds changed direction, officials said.

Even as officials lifted mandatory evacuation orders for parts of the county along the Pacific Coast, they issued new evacuation warnings for a tract of Lake County as the flames threatened to lurch eastward.

High-speed winds were expected to return Tuesday morning into Wednesday afternoon, with gusts reaching 50 mph, again creating conditions that could feed the blaze, as The Washington Post has reported.

"We're playing both offense and defense right now on two different sides of the fire, and we're going to have to flip-flop that tomorrow when that wind event comes through," Cal Fire Division Chief Jonathan Cox said in a news conference Monday night.

"Red flag" warnings will be in place for most of the Bay Area from Tuesday morning through Wednesday afternoon for "critical" fire weather that could allow wildfires to spread rapidly and behave in ways that would make them hard to control.

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office allowed residents in two evacuation zones west of Santa Rosa to return home, but it warned that they should be prepared to leave again if the fire intensifies. “If conditions change and we do see an increase in weather or fire activity,” Sheriff Mark Essick said, “we will have deputies back in those neighborhoods.”

At least 123 structures, including 57 homes, have been destroyed by the blaze, officials said. Another 20 structures were damaged and roughly 90,000 structures are still threatened.

Firefighters’ primary focus Monday was “aggressive” perimeter control, particularly near Mount St. Helena on the eastern edge of the fire and the Shiloh Ridge area to the south, officials said. Large air tankers and helicopters dropped water and fire retardant on the blaze, while crews used fire engines and bulldozers to stop the advancing flames on the ground.

The plan for Tuesday, fire officials said, was to ready emergency workers in case the fire to spreads across the Lake County line.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has declared a statewide emergency as fires rage at both ends of the state - most recently with the Getty Fire that erupted early Monday on the western edge of Los Angeles.

At least two firefighters have suffered injuries since the Kincade blaze began late Wednesday night in Geyserville, about 75 miles northwest of San Francisco. At least 94 structures have been destroyed, including the Soda Rock Winery near Highway 128.

Schools in the area announced a wave of closures: All 40 of Sonoma County's public schools were closed Monday into Tuesday, affecting more than 70,400 students. Sonoma State University, thought not considered under immediate threat, canceled all classes through Tuesday, and Santa Rosa Junior College canceled classes and campus activities through Wednesday.

All public meetings in Santa Rosa were also canceled for the week.

Meanwhile, 1.3 million Californians in the Bay Area are without power as state utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric implemented a historically large blackout to mitigate the risk of additional fires as high winds whip around the tinder-dry region.

PG&E also cut gas service to more than 20,000 customers "to protect homes from fire," Sonoma officials said.

The utility has faced fierce criticism over its decision to cut power to so many people, including from the governor, who blamed PG&E for failing to keep its electrical systems up to date.

Officials have also raised concerns that the mass outages could be particularly dangerous for hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities that depend on powered medical equipment to care for their patients.

On Monday, Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie called on Newsom to explain what he was doing to ensure veterans receiving medical care would be safe during the blackouts. “With so many Veterans dependent on these necessities, the uncertainty these power outages pose is extremely troubling,” Wilkie told Newsom in a letter.

Nearly 3,400 personnel are fighting the massive wildfire, condending with a mix of windy and dry conditions.

In the San Francisco Bay region - particularly the North Bay, which includes Sonoma County - a 36-hour period of howling, desiccating winds came to a temporary end about 11 a.m. local time Monday. "Red flag" warnings are in place until that time for most of the Bay Area.

The air mass over this region is at record dry levels for this time of year, and abundant vegetation after a wet winter is also extremely dry, which primes the environment for fires.

The Bay Area won't catch much of a break after Monday. The National Weather Service is forecasting another around of "strong, gusty, and dry offshore winds" beginning midday Tuesday and lasting into Wednesday morning.

This looming event would be the third major "Diablo wind" event in seven days, something NWS forecasters in the region said they have no memory of occurring before. Typically these events are more spread out over time. With the next event, winds are expected to be highest in the North and East Bay hills, where gusts up to 65 mph are possible.

A chief concern among forecasters and emergency officials is whether the fire will jump across Highway 101 and, according to the Los Angeles Times, "ignite an area that hasn't burned since the 1940s."

The mass evacuations proved controversial in some of the areas farther from the fire. On Sunday, Essick, the Sonoma County sheriff, said he was "100 percent convinced" he made the right call in ordering the mandatory evacuations Saturday and Sunday, according to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat.

"I can understand why someone in Bodega Bay is saying, 'C'mon. What are you guys doing?' I don't take these decisions lightly," Essick said. "I look at October 2017, and I still get emotional about this because I was there. . . . We lost 24 lives."

The 2017 Tubbs Fire in Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties killed at least 22 people and was one of the most destructive blazes in state history, incinerating more than 5,000 properties - many of them homes in Santa Rosa - and causing more than $1.2 billion in damage. The Nuns Fire

The sheriff urged people to remain calm as officials weigh whether to allow residents to return home.

"We understand that there's a lot of anxiety out there," he said. "Please be patient."

He confirmed that deputies arrested two people over the weekend, including one man who was jailed for alleged reentry in an area he did not live in and whom deputies suspect "may have been looking for a crime of opportunity" to burglarize evacuated homes.

A second arrest, of a woman in Sonoma County, was for arson, though Essick called it an isolated incident unrelated to the wildfire. The woman allegedly set the fire at a residence in retaliation for what Essick characterized as a "domestic situation."

As other residents fanned out to evacuation centers in the surrounding area, Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat, said he had confirmation from the Department of Homeland Security that there would be no immigration enforcement at local shelters.