Thousands ordered to flee California wine county blaze

LOS ANGELES -- California firefighters raced against time on Saturday as they cut defensive lines against a wildfire in Sonoma County's famed wine country and authorities ordered 50,000 people to evacuate, ahead of winds that are forecast to pick up at night and spread the flames.

The expanded evacuation orders came as the utility Pacific Gas and Electric Corp prepared to shut off power to about 940,000 customers in 36 of the state's counties to guard against the risk that an electric mishap could spark a blaze.

The move to cut power to so many people quickly drew a rebuke from California Governor Gavin Newsom, who called it "unacceptable" in a video message on Twitter. The Democratic governor has blamed the bankrupt utility for lackluster investment in its infrastructure that he says makes its protective blackouts larger than they need to be.

Among the areas where power was shut off were parts of Sonoma County charred by the 10,000-hectare Kincade Fire.

The blaze burning along steep hillsides in rugged terrain north of San Francisco was one of two major wildfires burning in California, with the other, the Tick Fire, raging in suburban Los Angeles where it has charred 1,700 hectares with hundreds of residents still under evacuation orders on Saturday.

The more than 2,000 firefighters battling the Kincade Fire, which officials said was 10% contained and has destroyed nearly 50 structures, faced a more immediate threat from weather than crews battling the Tick Fire.

Winds around the Kincade Fire were expected to reach peak intensity on Saturday night into early Sunday, with sustained speeds of up to 90 kph and gusts of 130 kph in mountains and canyons, said Ryan Walburn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The winds will likely push flames toward the southwest, Walburn said, which would bring it closer to the 101 Freeway and put the towns of Windsor and Healdsburg at risk.

Authorities on Saturday ordered all the residents of those two towns to leave, with more than 50,000 people in Sonoma County told to evacuate.

Sonoma County supervisors and other officials at a news conference compared the potential for damage from the wildfire to an October 2017 complex of blazes that destroyed entire residential subdivisions in the nearby town of Santa Rosa and killed more than 40 people.

"This is a life-threatening situation and a danger to our entire town," said Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli, whose town has a population of nearly 30,000 people.

In an episode that underscored the dangers of civilians staying behind, on Friday evening a firefighter on the Kincade Fire had to deploy a portable shelter - which is made of aluminum and looks like a giant burrito wrapper - and bring two civilians inside to escape advancing flames, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) spokesman Jonathan Cox.

"The decisions that people make regarding evacuations affect the first-responders lives, and we can't ask you enough: For us to be successful we must have the public evacuate," Cox said.

ROLLING BLACKOUTS

The winds were forecast to weaken on Sunday afternoon.

The cause of the Kincade Fire is still under investigation, but officials have said it erupted on Wednesday near the base of a damaged high-voltage transmission tower owned by PG&E.

Earlier in the week, authorities had ordered 2,000 people to evacuate their homes, with flames coming closest to Geyserville, a historic enclave home to about 900 residents and named for geothermal features in the vicinity.

The blaze also has encroached on wineries in a region full of internationally known vintners, including "The Godfather" director Francis Ford Coppola.

On Saturday, authorities took advantage of the lull in winds to dispatch several air planes and helicopters to fight the Kincade Fire, said CAL FIRE spokeswoman Tricia Austin.

PG&E said it began shutting off power to some customers in Northern California on Saturday afternoon, in blackouts that would continue rolling out into Sunday evening when residents of Kern County north of Los Angeles would have their electricity shut off.

Outages could last for more than two days, said PG&E spokeswoman Suzanne Hosn.

"We are constantly working to minimize the impact of these safety shutoffs while prioritizing public safety," Hosn said.

SMOKE DAY - NO SCHOOL

The Tick and Kincade fires have worsened air quality in Los Angeles, San Francisco and areas around those two large cities.

In L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, which is just south of the Tick Fire, officials closed all public schools on Friday, giving thousands of students the day off, because of poor air quality.

At its peak, the Tick Fire burning in the Santa Clarita Valley north of Los Angeles forced the evacuation of about 50,000 people. It has destroyed at least nine structures since erupting from an unknown cause on Thursday and has been 25% contained, officials said on Saturday. No injuries have been reported.

Authorities allowed nearly all the residents displaced by the Tick Fire to return to their homes by Saturday morning, said Los Angeles County Fire Captain A.J. Lester, with only several hundred people still under evacuation orders.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Woman killed, 400 homes destroyed by California wildfire

LAKEPORT, California - A Northern California wildfire ranked as the most destructive to hit the drought-stricken U.S. West this year has killed a woman and burned some 400 homes to the ground, fire officials said on Monday, and they expect the property toll to climb.

The so-called Valley Fire erupted on Saturday and spread quickly to a cluster of small communities in the hills and valleys north of Napa County's wine-producing region, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents.

An elderly, disabled woman who was unable to flee her home died in the fire as flames consumed the building on Saturday evening, Lake County Sheriff's spokesman Lieutenant Steve Brooks said.

Evacuated residents recounted chaotic ordeals of having to flee their homes through gauntlets of flame, and some 9,000 structures remained threatened as darkness fell on Monday evening, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

"That whole place was ablaze. It was like Armageddon," said Steve Johnson, a 37-year-old construction worker from Southern California who was visiting his mother in the fire-ravaged community of Hidden Valley Lake. "We were literally driving through the flames."

Johnson and his mother safely escaped and spent Sunday night at a high school gymnasium converted into an evacuation center.

By Monday evening, the blaze had blackened 62,000 acres (24,690 hectares) of tinder-dry forests, brush and grasslands, and was only about 10 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.

About 40,000 acres (16,190 hectares) of the landscape were consumed in the first 12 hours of the fire at the peak of its intensity on Saturday and early Sunday, stoked by high winds.

Fire officials described the rapid initial rate of spread as nearly unprecedented, a consequence of vegetation desiccated by four years of drought and weeks of extreme summer heat.

Four firefighters were hospitalized with second-degree burns in the early hours of the blaze on Saturday.

By Monday night more than 1,400 firefighters were battling the flames, one of 12 major wildfires across the state during an intense fire season.

SCENES OF DEVASTATION

The communities of Cobb, Middletown, Hidden Valley Lake and the Harbin Hot Springs resort - located about 50 miles (80 km) west of Sacramento, the state capital - were reported to be hardest hit by the fire.

Reuters video footage from Middletown, a village of about 1,500 residents, showed a smoking, devastated scene of burned-out vehicles, twisted, blackened debris and charred foundations of buildings that had been reduced to ash. Roughly half of the town was leveled.

The carcass of a horse was seen lying on the shoulder of the road between Cobb and Middletown, a stretch of highway where miles of houses were laid to waste on both sides.

"We were trying to get out. We were trying to hook up our trailer and all of a sudden, two houses up I see this big wall of pink and red and gray," said Carol Ulrich of Middletown. "So we just dropped everything and left. I didn't even get my purse, nothing. We just drove away and left our trailer and everything."

Janet Mondragon of Middletown, appeared close to tears as she watched videotaped footage of her home in flames.

"We have nothing, absolutely nothing," she said. "What can I tell you? We are staying in a hotel in Santa Rosa, but we're going to have to start life over. There is nothing, absolutely nothing."

Cal Fire on Monday reported that some 1,000 structures had been lost, at least 400 of them homes. Mark Ghilarducci, Director of the state's Office of Emergency Services, told reporters on Monday some 13,000 people had been displaced.

Governor Jerry Brown, who also spoke at the news conference, said climate change would continue to worsen fire conditions.

That tally ranks as the greatest loss of property from a single blaze in California this season, or among the scores of wildfires that have ravaged the drought-stricken western United States so far this summer, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.

The property toll is expected to rise as damage-assessment teams reach areas of the fire zone that have yet to be surveyed, but no additional communities were under immediate threat on Monday, Smith said.

The Valley Fire also damaged the cooling towers at five of the 14 steam-generating plants operated by Texas-based Calpine Corp at a sprawling geothermal field straddling the Sonoma-Lake county border, company spokesman Brett Kerr said.

A separate blaze raging since Wednesday in the western Sierras has destroyed 135 homes and 79 outbuildings and was threatening about 6,400 structures, with some 10,000 people displaced there too, officials said.

In Oregon, meanwhile, Governor Kate Brown invoked the state's so-called Emergency Conflagration Act on Monday, mobilizing additional resources as a fast-growing wildfire threatened 275 homes in a rural area of the state.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com