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Wildfires Sweep Across Northern California; 15 Are Dead Wildfires Burn Out of Control Across Northern California; 15 Are Dead
(about 4 hours later)
SONOMA, Calif. — Wine country was shrouded in a thick layer of smoky haze here on Tuesday as firefighters continued to battle wildfires that have left at least 15 people dead and have damaged or destroyed about 2,000 structures, including wineries, homes and resorts. NAPA, Calif. — With roads still blocked by the police and fires still raging across broad swaths of Northern California, Matt Lenzi hiked through smoke-choked vineyards and waded the Napa River to reach the home his father lived in for 53 years. In its place, he found only blackened debris, blackened earth, and ash.
State fire officials estimated that 17 separate fires, the first group of which began Sunday night, had burned about 115,000 acres over eight counties. More than 100 people had been taken to hospitals by Tuesday morning, and officials said that the tallies of the dead and injured were likely to rise as many people were still missing or unaccounted for. “Every piece of vegetation was gone,” said Mr. Lenzi on Tuesday, after going back in the vain hope of finding the pet cat that his father, Carl Lenzi, who is in his 80s, left behind when he fled for his life. “Even the barbecue melted, and that’s built to take heat.”
About 20,000 people were forced to evacuate, some of them fleeing on foot and by car as the fires quickly overtook their towns, the authorities said. Dozens of shelters opened across Northern California. The fires ravaging California’s wine country since Sunday night — part of an outbreak of blazes stretching almost the entire length of the state — continued to burn out of control Tuesday, as the toll rose to 15 people confirmed dead, hundreds hospitalized, and an estimated 2,000 buildings destroyed or damaged. But state and local officials warned that with many people still missing and unaccounted for, and some areas still out of reach of emergency crews, those figures are almost certain to rise.
Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday visited California’s office of emergency services to announce that President Trump had approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s request for a major disaster declaration and ordered federal aid to help the state in recovery efforts. The two biggest and most destructive fires consumed more than 52,000 acres in Napa and Sonoma Counties, propelled on Sunday night and Monday by 50-mile-per-hour winds and threatening cities that included Santa Rosa, Napa and Calistoga. The winds died down on Tuesday, but were forecast to pick up again later in the week, and Chief Ken Pimlott of Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, described the two fires, and a smaller one nearby, as “zero percent contained.”
“The Federal Emergency Management Agency has responded promptly to assist California in fighting these terrible fires,” Mr. Brown said in a statement. “I appreciate the fast response from the president.” About 20,000 people heeded evacuation warnings, fleeing on foot and by car as the fires overtook their towns. In Sonoma County alone, 5,000 people took shelter in evacuation centers on Monday night, the county reported, and new evacuation orders were issued on Tuesday. Survivors told of narrow escapes from walls of flame that seemed to erupt from nowhere on Sunday night and Monday morning, forcing them to run even before text messages and other alerts were sent out by emergency warning systems.
The governor was monitoring the situation but was not planning to visit the area on Tuesday, a spokesman said, explaining that Mr. Brown did not want to interrupt firefighting efforts. “We always thought the alert system would give us time, but there was no notice, no warning,” said Maureen Grinnell, 77, who lived in the hills north of Napa with her husband, Sheldon, 89, who uses a walker. “I was watching a movie with my 19-year-old granddaughter and I smelled smoke, and I looked out the window to see flames approaching.”
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said early Tuesday that firefighters were expected to make some progress. Officials were encouraged by improved weather conditions. The winds, which had pushed the flames rapidly and in an unpredictable manner, had died down significantly, said Daniel Berlant, an assistant deputy director with the department. From that moment, they stayed with the house seven to 10 minutes, she said — just long enough to load the three of them, a dog and a handful of belongings into a car.
But all 17 fires remained active, and several of the largest had not been contained on Tuesday morning. Ken Pimlott, the director of the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said at a news conference that there were still several days of battling the fires to come, cautioning, “We are far from out of the woods.” “By the time I started to back the car out of the garage, the house was already on fire,” Ms. Grinnell said. “I drove down the road through smoke with flames on both sides. It almost looked like the burning of Atlanta in ‘Gone With the Wind.’”
Mr. Berlant said that large fires that had not been contained included the Tubbs fire in Sonoma and Napa counties, which had burned at least 27,000 acres; the Atlas Peak fire, which had burned 25,000 acres; and the Redwood Complex fire in Mendocino county, which had burned 19,000 acres. Pamela Taylor, 66, at first watched the fire from the mobile home park in Santa Rosa where she lived, thinking it was not near enough to pose a threat — and then, suddenly, it was. “A gigantic fireball jumped across the freeway to the trees around the trailer park,” she said, and within minutes, trailers and cars were ablaze, and people were fleeing.
The fires raged through the hills that are home to some of the country’s most prized vineyards, and fire officials said that multiple wineries had been affected. “There was no turning the gas off, there was just running,” she said.
Mr. Pimlott said that the cause of the fires was still unclear and would be investigated. He pointed out that 95 percent of fires in the state were caused by humans in some manner and said that even a small spark, in windy, dry weather conditions like those on Sunday, could grow quickly into a large fire. James Harder and his friends managed to save his business, James Cole Winery, a small-scale maker of high-priced cabernets, even as the nearby Signorello Estate winery burned. Mr. Harder said he saw a wall of flame 20 to 30 feet high descending a hillside toward his property, embers whipping toward him, and formed a bucket brigade with six other people, working through the night, scooping water from a 10,000-gallon tank meant to irrigate his vines.
“These fires came down into neighborhoods before people realized they were occurring in many cases,” Mr. Pimlott said. “Some of these folks were literally just sleeping at home in bed and had no idea.” “We just thought, ‘Keep working, keep working,’” he said. “We would have lost everything if not for our friends.”
Cell service throughout the region was spotty, and down altogether in some places. Mark Ghilarducci, the director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said that about 77 cellphone sites were damaged or destroyed. All around them, in some of the most expensive real estate in the country, they could see neighbors’ houses going up in flames, their propane tanks exploding with ground-shaking force.
Meanwhile, in Southern California, a fire in the Anaheim Hills that broke out Monday morning burned through thousands of acres, sending smoke pouring into Orange County and turning the sky a smoky shade of orange. Next door, the gate to the Signorello property was open on Tuesday and a sign said “Open,” but no one was there. The reception area was destroyed, fires still burned from gas pipes there, and ash covered an infinity pool with a commanding view of the valley. But in the bar area, a refrigerator held a wheel of manchego cheese, beer bottles and soda cans, still intact.
Hundreds of firefighters rushed to the area, as a freeway was closed and several neighborhoods were forced to evacuate. Crews had begun to contain that fire, which destroyed about a dozen homes in East Anaheim, by Tuesday. How much of the season’s grape harvest was destroyed remains unclear.
In Northern California on Tuesday, firefighters planned to continue containment strategies, using bulldozers to cut down trees, brush and other flammable materials in front of fires. Crews used shovels and chain saws to create clear lines, starving the fire of material to feed on and holding it back. Fighters working on the ground were assisted by air support; on Monday, Mr. Berlant said, dozens of helicopters flew until sundown, pouring water on hot spots. Across the state, 17 large wildfires were still burning Tuesday, covering 115,000 acres, Chief Pimlott said. An unusually wet winter produced ample brush, and the state’s hottest summer on record dried it to tinder, setting the stage for a rough October, a month usually marked by dry air and high winds from the north and east.
The worst fires in Northern California tend to hit in October, when dry conditions prime them to spread fast and far as heavy winds, known as north winds or diablo winds, buffet the region. The entire American West has experienced a particularly brutal wildfire season, even as people in the Southeast have suffered the floods and winds of hurricanes. As of Oct. 6, wildfires had raced through 8.5 million acres, well above the last decade’s average of six million per year.
Residents of the American West are already experiencing a particularly brutal wildfire season, one that has caused thousands to flee their homes, turned buildings to charred skeletons and spread a thick smoke across hundreds of miles — just as people in coastal areas of the country have battled the floods and winds of hurricanes. Most of the current California wildfires are in the north, including a large one in Mendocino County and several others in the Sierra Nevada, the north coast and the San Joaquin Valley. But in Southern California, a fire that broke out Monday in the Anaheim Hills burned through thousands of acres and about a dozen homes, sending smoke pouring into Orange County and closing the 91 freeway, the main route into the county from the east.
As of Oct. 6, wildfires had raced through 8.5 million acres, well above the last decade’s average of 6 million per year. The winds whipping the flames in the area north of San Francisco Bay came from the north, and thousands of firefighters labored to build fire breaks on the southern flanks of the blazes to hold them back from populated areas. Supported by aircraft dropping water and fire retardant — ranging from helicopters to a Boeing 747 tanker — fire crews used bulldozers, chain saws and shovels to clear trees and brush, hoping to create fire breaks and starve the blazes of fuel.
While burned acres have not surpassed a 2015 record, experts say this year is concerning because so many of the fires have raged close to population centers, rather than in remote wild lands. Response crews have sometimes had to focus on saving homes over fighting fires, said Jessica Gardetto, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Land Management, stretching emergency efforts thin. A thick layer of smoke shrouded the region, and the Environmental Protection Agency rated the air quality as “unhealthy,” “very unhealthy,” and even “hazardous” in places. Many of the people taken to area hospitals were treated for smoke inhalation, and people walked through their neighborhoods and evacuation centers wearing paper masks, in hopes of protecting their lungs.
She attributed this to a growing number of people living at the edge of nature, an area known to forest fire experts as the urban-wildland interface. Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday visited the California Office of Emergency Services near Sacramento to announce that President Trump had approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s request for a major disaster declaration and ordered federal aid to help the state in recovery efforts.
In recent decades, fire seasons have grown longer and more destructive, something scientists attribute in part to increased dryness caused by climate change. (Scientists from the University of Idaho and Columbia University wrote in one study published last year that climate change had caused more than half of the dryness of Western forests since 1979.) Mr. Pimlott said that the cause of the fires was still unclear and would be investigated. He pointed out that 95 percent of fires in the state were caused by humans in some manner, and said that even a small spark in windy, dry conditions could grow quickly into a large fire.
The confluence of expanding development and warming temperatures has intensified a discussion among policy makers about how the nation will protect people from fires going forward — and how it will find the money to do so. Already, 2017 has been the most expensive fire season on record for the U.S. Forest Service, with fire-suppression costs exceeding $2 billion. Fires interrupted utilities in and around wine country, including cellular service, which ranged from spotty to nonexistent, making it harder for people to reach family and friends and for emergency workers to search for the missing. Mark Ghilarducci, director of the state Office of Emergency Services, said that about 77 cellphone sites were damaged or destroyed.
Mr. Trump has proposed a 21 percent cut to the budget of the Department of Agriculture, which includes the forest service, and a 12 percent cut to the Department of the Interior, which runs some firefighting services. Ramon Gallegos Jr., who works in the wine industry, said he had no electricity at home and had been unable to contact friends and co-workers.
The first two confirmed victims of the fire in Napa County were Charles Rippey, 100 and his wife, Sara, 98, officials said Tuesday. The police found their remains on Monday at their home in a residential neighborhood near the Silverado Country Club. “Who’s O.K.?” he asked. “Who’s not O.K.? We don’t know, we can’t get in touch with anybody.”
“Their residence was engulfed,” said John Robertson, the Napa County sheriff. With large areas still under evacuation orders, frustrated residents congregated at roadblocks on Tuesday, pleading with police officers to let them through to their homes. At a roadblock near the Silverado Trail, the famed Napa wine route, a sheriff’s deputy chased after a car that had bolted through a vineyard in an effort to bypass the roadblock.
Officials said Tuesday that 27,000 people are without power in Napa. The sheriff said breakdowns in the cellphone network have made it difficult to coordinate the search for more victims. “We’re getting some chest-to-chest instances now,” said John Robertson, the Napa County sheriff.
“My suspicion is that we’re going to find other people, he said. “This is the largest fire we’ve ever had.” Megan Condron, 37, of Santa Rosa, said she and her husband were able to save their wedding album, children’s baby books, some clothes and a case of wine before their home burned to the ground.
Barry Biermann, the Napa County fire chief, said four fires in the county were “still actively growing.” Soon after they left the house, a neighbor who was out of town called them, and asked them to save some letters from his house before it went up in flames. His wife, who died of cancer this year, had written the letters to their two sons, to open on their birthdays for years to come.
“With so many fires in the area, we are having to share resources,” he said. There were not enough fire personnel to protect all dwellings or businesses in the county, which was continuing to see structures lost to the fire, he said. The Condrons turned around, but a police officer refused to let them through.
Chief Biermann said it was “unusual” for so many fires to start at once. The origins of the fires continued to elude firefighters, who are focused on putting them out. Now many people in the region must decide how, and where, to reconstruct their lives. Mr. Lenzi, who trekked overland to the remains of his father’s home, asked about rebuilding when his father, Carl, went to an insurance office on Tuesday to discuss damages.
The Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, Calif., one of the area’s major cultural institutions, announced that it had suffered heavy damage and would be canceling all performances through Sunday. The center said on Twitter that the main building did not appear to have been seriously damaged, but that its classrooms were destroyed. “I’m not going to do it,” the elder Mr. Lenzi said. “This is your problem now.”
Megan Condron, 37, is a resident of Fountaingrove in northeast Santa Rosa, which she described in an interview Tuesday as “a beautifully amazing place to live, which is now completely gone.”
Ms. Condron, who has worked in the wine industry for the past 15 years, lived with her husband and two children on a hill near the top of the neighborhood. They first spotted the glow of the fire from a bedroom window on Sunday, close to midnight.
After losing power twice and texting with a group of friends, they packed, feeling “100 percent confident that we were going to return,” Ms. Condron said. They left their house at 2:30 a.m.
“It was still very windy and very warm, and there was already ash in the air. It just felt surreal,” Ms. Condron said. Halloween decorations had blown from the trees and mingled with dead leaves on the grass.
Hours later, Ms. Condron said, they learned their house had “burned to the ground.”
The Condrons were able to save their wedding album, the children’s baby books, some clothes and a case of their best wine. But they and many of their neighbors lost invaluable belongings.
As the Condrons were leaving, they received a call from a friend who lived in their neighborhood and had traveled to Texas. His wife had died of cancer earlier in 2017 and had written letters to their sons, who are 8 and 10, to open on each birthday for years to come. He asked the Condrons to grab them.
They turned around to drive back up the hill, but a police officer blocking traffic refused to let them through. They were unable to get the letters.