SANTA ROSA — A fast-moving wildfire that tore across Napa and Sonoma counties in the early hours of Monday morning destroyed homes on the eastern edge of this city and forced at least 70,000 North Bay residents to flee, many in hasty late-night evacuations.
But there was better news by Monday evening, when firefighters that had been struggling at the start of the day to defend homes and neighborhoods were cautiously optimistic that weather conditions had turned in their favor, as the ferocious dry winds that drove the fire’s explosive growth appeared to have died down.
“We don’t have those critical burning conditions that we were experiencing those last two nights,” Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nicholls said at a briefing late Monday. Fire crews, he said, “are feeling much more confident tonight when we were last night.”
The Glass Fire, the largest in the Bay Area and one of 27 blazes currently burning around California, more than tripled in size Monday to cover 36,236 acres as of around 5 p.m., with zero containment, according to Cal Fire. The entire city of Calistoga was ordered to evacuate Monday evening.
The blaze is made up of three fires that merged late Sunday and raced across the landscape. Nicholls said strong winds hurled embers over the Napa River and nearby vineyards, sparking spot fires on both sides of the Napa Valley and fueling a run through the mountains dividing Sonoma and Napa counties that ended in the suburban neighborhoods of eastern Santa Rosa.
“Multiple” people were injured in the fire, Nicholls said, though he did not provide further information. Sonoma County authorities said deputies rescued multiple people who defied evacuation orders and may have been injured.
Thousands of structures were threatened as the fire grew amid hot and dry conditions Monday, and heavy smoke forced fire crews to pause their aerial attack because of limited visibility.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday afternoon that a “substantial” number of structures had been destroyed in the fire, though authorities have not yet tallied the losses. Later in the day, Newsom declared a state of emergency in Napa, Sonoma and Shasta counties due to the Glass and Zogg fires.
Ten destroyed homes could be seen Monday along Mountain Hawk Drive in Santa Rosa’s Skyhawk Community. In Napa County, more than a dozen homes had burned on Crystal Springs Road near St Helena, as had the famed Chateau Boswell Winery on the Silverado Trail. Several more homes and wineries appeared to be damaged elsewhere in both counties.
Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner said he could not quantify the number of homes destroyed in the Santa Rosa area but that there was “significant loss between Los Alamos and Oakmont on the north side of Highway 12.”
Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said Monday afternoon that more than 68,000 people had been ordered to evacuate in his county; the entire city of Calistoga was under an evacuation order Monday evening, along with parts of St Helena and other areas in Napa County.
More than 1,000 firefighters had been called in by Monday morning — a stark relief from the strained staffing in the initial hours and days fighting the CZU, LNU and SCU Lightning Complex fires in August, when a barrage of lightning strikes sparked dozens of fires that burned more than a million acres.
“With a fire like this, I can’t stress enough that there is never enough resources to do what you need to do what you need,” Gossner said. “So, as much as we scraped to get as many resources at many levels, you only have so many so you use them to the best of your ability.”
But fire teams remain stretched thin across the state, as California enters the peak of its fire season. In addition to the fires in Napa and Sonoma County, the Zogg Fire, in Shasta County, also erupted overnight and prompted more evacuations just west of Redding, according to CalFire, which said the blaze had grown to 15,000 acres with zero containment as of Monday morning.
And in Butte County, winds forced authorities to order new evacuations for the North Complex Fire, which tore through the region Sept. 8 and has since killed 15 people. The evacuation orders include areas devastated by 2018’s Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history.
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In the North Bay, the Glass Fire prompted evacuation orders that began Sunday afternoon around the communities of Deer Park and St. Helena but expanded overnight to include the areas of Silverado, Melita and Stonebridge.
Flames threatened the Oakmont neighborhood just east of Santa Rosa, home to a huge retirement community, forcing the late-night evacuation of thousands of seniors. The orders reached as far west as Mark Springs Road to the west and Porter Creek Road to the north as of early Monday. Closer to downtown Santa Rosa, residents of Spring Lake, Summerfield and Middle Rincon were also ordered to flee.
[ See the latest evacuation maps for Sonoma County and Napa County. ]
Many Santa Rosa residents who fled their homes in the early morning hours Monday described a process both terrifying and familiar. The Glass Fire tore across the hillsides east of Santa Rosa, driven southwest by the wind on path reminiscent to that of the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which swept through neighborhoods just a few miles away.
Erratic offshore winds on Sunday had whipped a layer of hot, dry air to create the ideal conditions for a fire to ignite — and to stifle firefighters’ efforts to contain it. A red flag warning remained in effect Monday afternoon for much of Northern California.
Vianey Castaneda said she tried to remain calm as she drove through bumper-to-bumper traffic with her two children and mother as they left their Rincon Valley neighborhood overnight Monday. She had also evacuated during the Tubbs Fire.
“It was terrible. PTSD was kicking in,” said Castaneda, 35. “I could see the flame, the smoke and the winds. Everyone was panicking while in traffic.”
Her brother, Jordan Castaneda, left his home in the mountains as well. The Tubbs Fire had burned the homes of three neighbors, so he didn’t waste time leaving.
“The rate it was moving — it was coming right at us,” he said. “I just got that gut feeling: We need to go.”
Tracy Duenas, who lives on Sailing Hawk Avenue in the Skyhawk Community, said all of the fires hitting the region in recent years are getting old.
“We knew what we were supposed to do,” he said. “We were out of the house in 45 minutes.”
The remains of hilltop homes were still smoldering Monday afternoon along Mountain Hawk Drive, where the fire had ripped through the Sky Hawk Open Space canyon below and exploded up the hillsides to the newer development of well-tended two-story tract homes.
Dylan Duenas, Tracy’s 17-year-old son, fled with his parents and little sister late Sunday night and was certain their house had been destroyed, like that of their neighbors two doors down who had just moved in. But when they hiked three miles to their home on Monday morning after being blocked by road closures, Dylan and Tracy found it was safe, though some sections of fence were burned and embers were smoldering in their yard.
“A firefighter was in our driveway, watching our house,” said Dylan, hosing down hot spots along the sidewalk early Monday afternoon. “We didn’t think it was going to get this close. We thought we were just being safe when we evacuated.”
Tracy said, “Fortunately for us, we dodged a big bullet.”
Jack and Karen Madigan, both in their 70s, were awakened after midnight by an emergency alert telling them to flee their Santa Rosa home. Jack collected his diabetic medications and they fled, leaving their packed bags inside because they didn’t want to waste time going up and down the stairs of their second-floor apartment. They were among the evacuees gathered Monday morning at an evacuation point in a community park on West Third Street after the long night.
“We could feel the heat from the fire. We could see it. I was especially frightened, shaking,” said Karen, 75, a retired librarian. “It’s pretty stressful and we’re not sure we can take it another year. We’re talking about moving away.”
The couple slept in their tiny Honda Fit in the library parking lot until they moved to the evacuation center Monday morning. Their home had been spared from the Tubbs Fire, but they are still rattled.
“You go through one or two and you think that’s the end of it and it’s not,” Jack said. “They seem to be getting worse each time.”
Nicholls, the Cal Fire division chief, said the Glass Fire burned through some of the last territory in that part of Sonoma County that records show had been untouched by fire for more than a century — making it rich in vegetation that helped fuel its rapid growth, which extended even into the burn scars of the Tubbs and Nuns fires from 2017.
The Tubbs Fire had burned much of the land to the northwest, and last year’s massive Kincaid Fire covered much of the area north of that. Elsewhere, the North Bay has already been ravaged this year by the LNU Lightning Complex, the fourth-largest wildfire in California history that torched more than 360,000 acres around Lake Berryessa, as well as the Wallbridge Fire near Healdsburg in Sonoma County.
“There was a much greater accumulation of vegetation on the landscape than we have in other areas of the county so that most definitely contributed to some of the fire behavior that we saw as the fire came into Santa Rosa,” Nicholls said.
Cal Fire officials said the cause of the Glass Fire remains under investigation.
Before the blaze broke out, Pacific Gas and Electric Company had instituted an intentional power outage affecting 288 customers in Napa County because of high fire danger. That outage was far smaller than others ordered by the utility, which has been found responsible for sparking several of California’s most destructive wildfires with its equipment. On Monday, PG&E officials said they shut down power to about 30,000 more customers in Napa and Sonoma counties at the request of firefighters, but said they have not seen any indication their equipment was responsible for the North Bay fires.
The fire also prompted the evacuation of Adventist Health St. Helena Hospital, a 151-bed acute-care facility, where officials worked to transfer all patients “out of an abundance of caution,” the Napa Office of Emergency Services said.
Back in Santa Rosa, Janette Johnston was also forced to flee from her apartment in the Rincon Valley area. As ash blew in the evacuation center parking lot Monday morning, she broke down in tears.
“I was homeless for many years and I got housing — that apartment. And now it may burn down and I don’t want to be homeless again,” Johnston, 56, said, choking up. “Right when I was going to start school, coronavirus came. I want to laugh. What else am I going to do? But I have to stop crying because it gives me such a headache.”
In the sleeveless shirt she fled in, she leaned against her SUV and hugged herself. She had hoped by this stage in her life she’d be taking care of herself and “helping someone else. That was the plan.”
Now, though, “I don’t know what to do with myself,” she said. “I think it’s the end of the world. Do you think that? I do.”
Check back for updates.
