Grass fire extinguished in area of Santa Rosa scorched by Tubbs fire

Fire crews put out a small vegetation fire Saturday afternoon in an area that was scorched last October by the Tubbs fire.

Firefighters responded at 12:02 p.m. to the blaze near Oakhaven Court in the Riebli-Wallace neighborhood of Santa Rosa, said Battalion Chief Ron Busch of the Rincon Valley Fire District.

The fire was near some homes that are being rebuilt after they were destroyed in last year’s blazes. “They weren’t actually threatened, but they were in the vicinity,” Busch said of the homes.

The blaze was under control in less than ?15 minutes and burned only one-third of an acre, Busch said. Crews from the Rincon Valley, Santa Rosa, Windsor, Kenwood fire departments as well as Cal Fire responded to the call.

Fire officials said the cause of the fire appears to be a spark from a lawnmower.

The blaze and a larger 400-acre fire in Lake County come as firefighters were on guard this weekend amid high fire-risk conditions, including triple-digit temperatures across much of Northern California. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for much of the area through 8 p.m. Sunday.

Cal Fire has stationed a Blackhawk helicopter at the Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport as a precaution, while another helicopter was positioned at an airport in Chico. The fire agency also mobilized an MD-87 tanker at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.

Locally, the weather service said the greatest fire danger would be in the higher terrain of northern and eastern Napa County and Sonoma County because of forecasts calling for gusty winds and low humidity.

Temperatures in Santa Rosa had reached a high of 97 degrees as of 3 p.m. Saturday, said Scott Rowe, meteorologist for the weather service. The county’s highest reading was at 104 degrees, reached 4 miles east of Healdsburg and 3 miles west of Guerneville, Rowe said.

Cooler temperatures are expected for today, with Santa Rosa highs in the lower 80s, he said. “It will be much more refreshing tomorrow,” Rowe said.

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com.