Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group
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Fierce winds drove across Sonoma County early Sunday morning, pushing the massive Kincade Fire further south into wine region as authorities ordered thousands of more residents to evacuate and get out of the path of the rapidly-moving wildfire.
Flames sprang up on the west side of Highway 128 in the Alexander Valley, tearing through several storied wineries as violent winds whipped grapevines, signposts, and trees, filling the roadway with debris.
The tasting room and main building of the Soda Rock Winery caught fire around 3 a.m., and was fully engulfed by flames within an hour, filling the air with percussive booms as the fire ripped through the structure and blew out its windows.
By around 6 a.m., gusts of up to 93 miles per hour were recorded in the Healdsburg Hills — the area near where the fire was pushing towards the towns of Healdsberg and Windsor — and igniting several spot fires as embers blew ahead of the primary blaze.
In all, more than 90,000 people have been ordered to evacuate from the fire zone, including an additional 39,000 people whose homes were put under mandatory evacuation Saturday night. The mandatory evacuation areas now include Dry Creek Valley including the upper portion of Westside Road and Mill Creek Road; Larkfield and the Mark West Drainage; and all areas west of Healdsburg and Windsor, throughout the Russian River Valley to Bodega Bay.
The evacuations were expanded again early Sunday to include most of Santa Rosa, as well as Sebastopol, Bloomfield and Valley Ford, and all areas west of Fulton Road, Llano Road, and Pepper Road to the Marin County line.