LOS ANGELES — California’s famed wine country, already suffering an economic blow brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and covered in smoke for weeks, is on fire again.
The state’s losses were mounting on Monday as two new wildfires burned out of control, killing three people in Shasta County, the sheriff said. And in wine country, the famous Chateau Boswell winery was gone, a community of tiny homes for homeless people has burned, and an untold number of houses were feared lost.
For residents, still haunted by fires that tore through the area three years ago, destroying thousands of homes and killing dozens of people, the wildfires that exploded on Sunday were as familiar as they were terrifying.
“We’ve evacuated and we are watching the news and watching my district burn again,” Susan Gorin, a Sonoma County supervisor, said Monday morning from a hotel in Novato where she had evacuated to. “I fear that it’s heading into those areas that lost homes and were rebuilt, and I fear they will burn again.”
The two fast-moving blazes, the Zogg Fire in Shasta County and the Glass Fire in Napa and Sonoma Counties, are uncontained and had burned more than 67,000 acres by Monday night, prompting new evacuation orders for thousands of people as the year’s grueling wildfire season wore on.
The new burst of fires comes as the West Coast struggles to recover from one of the worst seasons on record, even with months to go until the rainy season. Wildfires this year have left at least 40 people dead, destroyed more than 7,000 structures and scorched more than five million acres in California, Oregon and Washington. Experts have linked the devastating fire season to climate change, saying it is part of a long-term trend of more frequent and disastrous blazes in the West.
“As of right now there’s zero containment,” Jimmy Zanotelli, a public information officer with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department, said of the fatal Zogg Fire, whose cause was unknown. “We’re still seeing some fire growth and some critical fire rates of spread, so it’s been a challenge.”
In a news conference on Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said a “substantial” number of structures, including wineries, had been damaged. Speaking of the history of fires in the area, he said there was “a lot of consternation in and around that region that has been hit over and over and over again.”
In wine country, residents spoke of terrifying nighttime evacuations on Sunday as the flames bore down.
In the Oakmont area of Santa Rosa, residents of Los Guilicos Village, a community of tiny homes for formerly homeless people and those suffering from mental illness and substance abuse disorders, were forced to evacuate at about 9 p.m.
Among them was Carmen Almejo, 53, who fled with her dog, a Chihuahua named Carmencita. All she brought was a sweatshirt for herself, a sweatshirt for her dog, some dog food and water.
“I was very scared,” she said from an evacuation center. “When we were going in the van, we could see the flames and it was scary. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
As day broke on Monday, residents learned that much of the village had burned to the ground. Ms. Almejo said she spent the morning taking long walks with Carmencita to calm her nerves.
Across the street from Los Guilicos Village on Sunday night, Oakmont Gardens, a senior assisted living center, was evacuating hundreds of residents, some in wheelchairs and others using walkers. “That was amazing that they got everyone out of there,” said Chris Grabill, who runs Los Guilicos Village. “There were vans and city buses filled with elderly, vulnerable people.”
At the CrossWalk Community Church in Napa, which was designated as an evacuation center, the line stretched out the door on Monday afternoon, as evacuees gathered under tents to seek shade from the near triple-digit temperatures.
For many residents, it was not even the first time they had to flee a fire this year. Kristi Horn, who works at Pacific Union College in Angwin, had to evacuate in August after a lightning siege sparked several fast-moving fires. This time, she had to pack up and leave around 5 a.m. Sunday.
“I keep joking I want to move to Florida because you still get coastal access to the beach and you have several days to plan for a hurricane,” Ms. Horn said. “For fires, you’re woken up in the middle of the night.”
Jennifer Rhodes, 68, said she left her home in Deer Park early Sunday morning after a neighbor knocked on her door.
“I never unpacked from the last fire because they said the next three months was fire season,” said Ms. Rhodes, a retiree. She does not yet know if her home is still standing.
A spokeswoman for Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, said the cause of the Glass Fire in wine country had not been determined. But some residents reported hearing explosions just as the fire ignited, suggesting that the cause may have been propane tanks, said Michael Mann, chief executive of WineCountry Media, a tourism and e-commerce company.
Everyone in his industry, he said, was scrambling on Monday to find out how much damage the fires had inflicted. “Most winery owners are trying to figure out if their properties are still there,” he said.
Meteorologists warned of more fire-prone conditions this week, after repeated heat waves and weeks of windy weather this summer. Over the weekend, the National Weather Service placed the greater Bay Area under a “red flag warning” because of dry and windy conditions and low humidity; the service extended the warning into Monday evening.
Lynne Tolmachoff, a spokeswoman for Cal Fire, said that about 8,500 homes, or 12,000 people, were under evacuation orders, and that about 1,500 firefighters were battling the blazes.
As a precaution, the utility company Pacific Gas and Electric said it had shut off power on Sunday in portions of the North Valley and Northern and Central Sierra regions, affecting about 65,000 customers. Power was expected to be restored by the end of the day Monday for the majority of customers.
Ms. Gorin, the county supervisor, was among those living in the areas under evacuation orders. But on Sunday night, well before the orders were issued, she saw the fire burning and started packing.
“I brought every photograph I could get my hands on,” she said, adding that she also brought with her jewelry and her computer.
“In general, people are exhausted,” said Ms. Gorin, who lives in Santa Rosa’s Oakmont neighborhood and lost her home in the 2017 fires. “They are tired of smoke. We’ve had smoke overlaying us for the last three weeks, and the skies are just beginning to clear.”
She said she has been living in a rented house while her home was being rebuilt, and she feared she might lose it again. She also feared for her constituents, and said many probably lost their homes on Sunday night. But it will likely be days until officials will be able to reach the area and survey the damage, she said.
Historically, fire seasons in California began around June and July and lasted into October. But the seasons have been growing longer.
“The last several years with the drought and lack of rainfall, we have had a very dry vegetation which is extremely receptive to burning, so we have not been having that closure that we normally would have in early fall,” Cheryl Buliavac, a spokeswoman at Cal Fire, said. “It’s been a year-round fire season.’
In wine country, officials have improved their alert system for residents in danger, and have positioned cameras on mountaintops to detect fires earlier.
“The information flow is better, but the sense of dread is not,” Lynda Hopkins, a Sonoma County supervisor, said.
On Monday, she said, a familiar sense of anxiety had set in. “It’s just numbing at this point, the number of fires up here. What’s eerie about this is it feels so much like 2017.”
Tim Arango reported from Los Angeles, Johnny Diaz from Miami, and Carly Stern from Napa, Calif. Concepción de León contributed reporting from New York.
September 29, 2020 at 10:41AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/us/california-glass-zogg-fires.html
New Evacuations Ordered as Two Wildfires Erupt in Northern California - The New York Times
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