SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Northern California officials ordered a new round of …
Thousands more Californians ordered to flee wildfires as gusting winds return
The Washington Post
Lisa Bonos, Amy B Wang, Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
6 hrs ago
Video by CBS News SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Northern California officials ordered a new round of mandatory evacuations overnight Saturday for
parts of the Sonoma Valley and
eastern Santa Rosa as
gusting winds returned, reviving dangerous fire conditions in a region
that has been devastated by ongoing blazes since last week.
The
National Weather Service warned
Friday night that strong winds were expected throughout Northern
California, with gusts of 35 to 45 mph, putting much of the region under
a red flag warning.
“If any new fires start, they could spread
extremely rapidly,” the NWS said. Dangerous winds and extremely dry
“fuels” on the ground “also could cause problems with the current
wildfires and the firefighters trying to suppress them,” the NWS noted.
Late
Friday, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office recommended that residents
in eastern Sonoma Valley be prepared to leave because of a blaze in the
area, dubbed the Nuns Fire, that was only 10 percent contained. Shortly
after 2 a.m. local time Saturday, the order was upgraded to a mandatory
evacuation — with repeated notices underscoring the heightened urgency.
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“If you live in the areas below, LEAVE NOW!” Sonoma County officials
wrote Saturday . The evacuation order affected thousands of residents, as the Nuns Fire remained a “big, unwieldy beast,” a fire spokesman
told KQED News .
In
neighboring Napa County, to the east, officials said Saturday morning
that they did not expect any new evacuations but cautioned residents to
remain vigilant because of “significant wind activity.”
“Sonoma
County has had a very tough morning with the winds that have surfaced
over there. We’re not out of the woods and have work to do,” Napa County
Fire Chief Barry Biermann said at a news conference Saturday morning.
“But on our side of it, off of the Highway 29 area, we have pockets that
are burning down into dry creek.”
Slide 1
of 45: SANTA ROSA, CA - OCTOBER 13, 2017: Fire trucks monitor a fire
that threatens the Oakmont community along Highway 12 in Santa Rosa on
October 13, 2017. The retirement community had been evacuated on the
second day of the Santa Rosa fire. (Photo by Genaro Molina/Los Angeles
Times via Getty Images)
Wildfires have consumed large
swaths of the wine country north of San Francisco. At least 38 people
have died so far and thousands evacuated.
(Pictured) Fire trucks
monitor a fire that threatens the Oakmont community along Highway 12 in
Santa Rosa on Oct. 13, 2017. The retirement community had been evacuated
on the second day of the Santa Rosa fire.
Slideshow by photo services Even as
several fires still burn across hundreds of acres in the California wine
country, the horrific scale of death and destruction is coming into
focus.
At least 38 people have been confirmed dead in four
counties, many of them elderly, some burned to ashes. One victim was 14
years old. (The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office
revised its death toll late Friday, from nine fatalities to eight.)
Taken
together, the disastrous blazes — more than 20 in all since Sunday,
including at least six in Sonoma County — have killed more people than
any other California wildfire on record. The death toll is certain to
rise as authorities — some accompanied by cadaver dogs — continue to
explore the wreckage.
Hundreds are still missing. Statewide, an estimated
5,700 structures have
been destroyed, including whole neighborhoods reduced to smoldering
rubble. About 90,000 people have been displaced by the fires, officials
said Friday.
“It’s devastating. I’ve only driven maybe 5 percent
of the fire area . . . I don’t even think I understand what the damage
toll is going to be, and I have a better handle on it than most,” Sonoma
County Sheriff Rob Giordano told the
Los Angeles Times . “Santa Rosa will be a different planet. There is so much to rebuild. It will absolutely change the community.”
Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, suffered the most damage, with
20 people confirmed dead
and 223 still reported missing. The fires have destroyed nearly 3,000
homes and caused $1.2 billion in damage in Santa Rosa, the county seat
and gateway to the wine tourism industry.
© (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Firefighter Chris Oliver walks between grape vines as a helicopter
drops water over a wildfire burning near a winery Saturday, Oct. 14,
2017, in Santa Rosa, Calif. Fire crews made progress this week in their
efforts to…
In Napa County, there were six confirmed fatalities as of Saturday afternoon
; 74 people remain unaccounted for, out of the more than 200 reported missing over the past week.
Firefighters
have made some significant gains. As of Saturday morning, some of the
deadliest fires in Sonoma and Napa counties were nearly 50 percent
contained,
according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection .
Biermann,
the Napa County fire chief, said firefighting efforts Saturday would be
focused on maintaining perimeter lines to keep existing blazes
contained, even as they continued to burn.
As blazes are extinguished, counties have been preparing to let people return to evacuated areas.
“My
commitment and top priority remains to bring back normalcy to this
community,” Cal Fire Deputy Chief Bret Gouvea said Saturday. The causes
of the fires remained under investigation, he added.
© Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
A search and rescue team looks for bodies at a property where a person was reported missing in Santa Rosa.
Giordano said Friday deputies had begun the task of searching for the
missing and the dead, with bodies showing up in a variety of
conditions.
“We have recovered people where their bodies are
intact,” he said, “and we have recovered people where there’s just ash
and bone.”
The majority of the victims who have been identified
were elderly, except for one: A 14-year-old who was found near his
family’s home in Mendocino County. Kai Logan Shepherd was running away
from the fire when he was killed, according to the Mendocino County
Sheriff’s Office.
Of the 10 Sonoma County victims
who have been named so far, two
of whom were identified through medical devices or implants, two
through dental records and another by a distinctive tattoo, while others
were matched with fingerprints or visuals and other investigative
means.
Most were from Santa Rosa, and all were older adults, with
an average age of 75, the sheriff’s office said. The youngest, Michael
John Dornbach, was 57; the oldest, Arthur Tasman Grant, was 95. In
neighboring Napa County, an
elderly couple who
had just celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary were killed on
Sunday. Another elderly couple in their 80s were also killed in
Mendocino County.
Sonoma County spokesman Scott Alonso said it’s
not yet clear why the victims were unable to escape the fire. But, he
said: “Folks who are elderly have some mobility challenges and are
wheelchair-bound. They may not have access to a car. We had calls right
when the fires were going on . . . folks needed rides. They needed rides
to get out of those mandatory evacuation zones.”
Of
1,485 missing-person reports in Sonoma County,
1,250 had been found safe by Friday afternoon, said Giordano, the sheriff. The whereabouts of the
235
missing were still unknown, although it is possible that a number of
them were found but not yet reported to authorities. Others may be out
of touch because of power outages and downed cell towers. In most cases,
people were removed from a missing-persons list after authorities
received calls from families saying they’ve been found.
As the
week progressed, authorities began facing questions about the cause of
the most damaging blaze, in Sonoma, and whether they did enough to warn
vulnerable residents as the flames edged closer to populated areas.
The
scrutiny marks the next phase of a disaster that erupted seemingly out
of nowhere Sunday night, prompting panic among residents who had no idea
that a fire was bearing down on them and emergency workers who said
they were stunned at the speed with which the fire progressed.
In
Sonoma County, law enforcement officials said they used a Reverse 911
system to call residents’ landlines to evacuate. The county also sent
out alerts through a voluntary text-message system. As of June, however,
just 10,500 of the county’s half-million residents had signed up for
the alerts.
Alonso, the county spokesman, said officials chose to
not send out a countywide alert to cellphones out of fear such a message
would incite panic and clog roadways.
“We wanted to target
specific neighborhoods that were under fire,” he said. “If an all-county
emergency evacuation was issued, the roads would’ve been jammed, [and]
our emergency responders would’ve had difficulty getting to where they
need to go to evacuate people.”
On Friday, the Sonoma County
Sheriff’s Office released body-camera footage showing a deputy
frantically driving door to door in Santa Rosa early Monday morning, as
flames closed in on the neighborhood.
Panting and coughing, the
deputy can be heard seen running through heavy smoke and flying embers
trying to notify residents. At one point, he and another person help
evacuate a disabled woman.
“Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, this
is a mandatory evacuation notice!” the deputy blares through a
loudspeaker as he drives through a street flanked by fire. “Leave your
homes!”
Days later, Santa Rosa residents would be sifting through
the ashes of what used to be their homes — or stood shocked to discover
their houses had somehow survived.
In downtown Santa Rosa on
Saturday, about 150 residents waited in line to enter a local assistance
center where they could register with FEMA for disaster relief.
As
volunteers passed out sandwiches and ash flitted through the air, some
displaced residents highlighted a silver lining in their devastating
losses: They knew their homes had burned, while there are still
thousands who live in evacuation zones and don’t know whether their
homes are still standing.
“It’s probably harder to not know than
to know,” said Steve Vella, who lived in the Coffey Park area, the
majority of which burned early Monday.
“I told my husband it’s a
relief that we know our fate,” added Corinne Rasmussen, a 54-year-old
administrative assistant who had lived in the Larkfield area. She and
her husband are currently staying with her sister in Rohnert Park while
trying to figure out their next move.
A FEMA representative
outside the assistance center said that the agency didn’t yet know
whether it would be constructing temporary housing for those who have
been displaced. Their priority was to determine how much and what kind
of assistance would be needed.
“Right now we want to get disaster survivors registered,” said FEMA spokesman Victor Inge.
A block away from the local assistance center, a poster summed up the local mood: “The love in the air is thicker than smoke.”
California
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D) and Kamala D.
Harris (D) visited the disaster zone in Sonoma County on Saturday
afternoon. At a
town hall , they said the fires’ aftermath was nothing like anything they had seen before.
“This
community has endured such incredible loss and pain,” Harris said.
“Please take advantage of all the resources that are available to you …
It’s going to be a long road ahead.”
Wang reported from Washington. Kristine Phillips, Herman Wong, Josh du Lac , Abigail Hauslohner and Aaron C. Davis in Washington contributed to this report.
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