Wildfires Scorch Northern California
Northern California is being hit by ferocious wildfires, leading to at least 10 deaths and some 20,000 evacuees.
By ROBIN LINDSAY on Publish Date October 9, 2017.
Photo by Jim Wilson/The New York Times.
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SANTA
ROSA, Calif. — Fast-moving wildfires raged across Northern California
on Monday, killing at least 10 people, sending well over 100 to
hospitals, forcing up to 20,000 to evacuate and destroying more than
1,500 buildings in one of the most destructive fire emergencies in the
state’s history.
Firefighters were battling blazes in eight counties, officials said.
In
Santa Rosa, the fire gutted a Hilton hotel and flattened the Journey’s
End retirement community, a trailer park not far from the freeway that
crosses the city. Most of the trailers were leveled, leaving a
smoldering debris field of household appliances, filing cabinets and the
charred personal effects of more than 100 residents. Pieces of ash fell
like snowflakes, and a pall of white smoke across the city blotted out
the sun.
Janet
Upton, a deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection, said that at least 15 separate fires across the region
had destroyed more than 1,500 homes and businesses and burned about
94,000 acres since late Sunday night. At least 10 people had been killed
as of Monday evening, she said: seven in Sonoma County, two in Napa
County and one in Mendocino County.
The
property damage, already among the worst seen in a fire in California,
was expected to increase. In Santa Rosa, the seat of Sonoma County, the
authorities imposed a curfew starting at sunset and said they were
watching for looters.
Gov.
Jerry Brown issued emergency proclamations for Butte, Lake, Mendocino,
Napa, Nevada, Orange, Sonoma and Yuba Counties, saying the fires had
damaged critical infrastructure and threatened thousands of homes. He
also asked President Trump to declare a major disaster.
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“This
is really serious. It’s moving fast. The heat, the lack of humidity and
the winds are all driving a very dangerous situation and making it
worse,” the governor said at a morning news conference. “It’s not under
control by any means. But we’re on it in the best way we know how.”
Hospitals
in Napa and Sonoma Counties reported scores of patients with
fire-related ailments. St. Joseph Health said it had treated about 170
people at three of its hospitals in the region — most of them for smoke
inhalation, but some for burns. Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and
Petaluma Valley Hospital postponed all elective procedures to free up
resources for emergency care.
The
fires began at about 10 p.m. Sunday and were fanned by wind gusts of
more than 50 miles an hour, Ms. Upton said. The causes remained under
investigation on Monday afternoon.
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.
Ms.
Upton said that conditions were critically dry, given the lack of
moisture in the air and the buildup of grass, brush and trees.
“Combined, that’s a recipe for disaster,” she said.
Smoke billowed into the Bay Area, but the Marin County Fire Department reported that there were no separate fires there.
Reports
suggested that residents had been caught unaware, many of them fleeing
in cars and on foot as firefighters rushed to contain the outbreak. A
number of roadways, including highways, were blocked by fire.
Parts of Santa Rosa were evacuated, according to the city manager, who said
the Kaiser Permanente and Sutter hospitals were being cleared out. Marc
Brown, a spokesman for Kaiser Permanente, said about 130 patients had
been evacuated from the Santa Rosa medical center because of the fires.
But
St. Joseph Health, another hospital system in the area, said in a
statement Monday evening that its facilities were still open.
Flying
cinders carried the fire across roads and ignited small patches through
neighborhoods: A pile of wood chips in the Home Depot parking lot
caught fire. Traffic lights at multiple intersections were not
functioning, and columns of black smoke could be seen in the evergreen
forests on the northern outskirts of the city.
The
fires raged through the hills that are home to some of the country’s
most prized vineyards. The main north-south highway that connects San
Francisco to the northernmost parts of California was closed Monday as
fire engulfed both sides of the freeway. Santa Rosa is a hub for tours
into wine country, and at least two large hotels that cater to the wine
tourism trade were destroyed by the fires.
North
of Santa Rosa’s downtown, residents of the Overlook, a hilltop
apartment complex, used fire extinguishers to put out flames engulfing
cypress trees planted along a building. Minutes later, the flames
returned. At least three engines and ladder trucks arrived but could not
stop flames on one of the buildings from spreading to the roof.
“It
looks like they’re giving up on that one,” said Derek Smith, a Santa
Rosa resident watching the blaze whose house was several blocks away.
Belia
Ramos, the chairwoman of the Napa County board of supervisors, said the
county was dealing with three main fires. One has threatened more than
10,000 acres in northern Napa County, another has endangered 8,000 to
12,000 acres, and a third has affected about 2,000 acres, she said.
California was hit by fires throughout the summer. Late last month,
several blazes led to the evacuation of about 1,000 people in Southern
California. And on Monday, a brush fire in Anaheim burned at least seven
homes.
“I’ve
been with the department for 31 years, and some years are notorious,”
Ms. Upton said, adding, “I’m afraid that 2017 is going to be added to
that list now.”
Even
into the early afternoon — many hours after the homes were destroyed in
the Journey’s End retirement community in Santa Rosa — flames shot from
a large propane tank with a roar that resembled an aircraft engine.
Richard
Snyder and Robert Sparks, both residents of the retirement community,
said their neighboring trailers had been incinerated. They lost
televisions, books, laptops — and copies of the insurance policies they
had taken out.
“This is all I have,” Mr. Snyder said, pointing to his jeans and turquoise T-shirt. “And one pair of glasses.”
The fire was so intense, it burned through the metal and glass trailers and safes that had been advertised as fireproof.
“It was locked,” Dana Walter, Mr. Sparks’s daughter, said of the safe. “Passports, ID cards, everything gone.”
Ofelia
Razo, one of about a dozen residents whose houses were spared, fled
with her purse in a pre-dawn evacuation with dozens of other residents.
Her husband, Milton, took only his guitar.
When they returned about 10 hours later, Ms. Razo saw the smoking rubble in the distance and broke down.
But
as she came closer, she saw that the fire had stopped at her wooden
lattice fence. Her powder blue trailer was, bizarrely, untouched. Even
the plastic flowers in a ceramic pumpkin vase on the porch were intact.
Her red rose bushes were only lightly singed.
“It’s a miracle!” she said. “Gracias, SeƱor!”
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