Wind conditions shift pressure to northern, eastern flanks of Glass fire

With a shift in the wind, the Glass fire turned its back on Santa Rosa Tuesday, allowing firefighters to launch aggressive attacks to halt the fire’s advance into Sonoma County and cut firebreaks on critical portions of the firefront in Sugarloaf Ridge and Trione-Annadel state parks before the return of hot and windy weather forecast in the coming days.

The 46,600-acre blaze straddling Sonoma and Napa counties was 2% contained Tuesday night. It was burning most fiercely in northern Napa Valley, bearing down on Calistoga from both the east and the west and forcing the evacuation of Angwin, where National Guard helicopters launched sorties to aid crews on the ground.

Though the skies remained too smoky for aircraft to fly in Sonoma County, the threat to Santa Rosa had diminished enough that authorities allowed nearly 50,000 people to return home, even to the Skyhawk community where more than a dozen homes were lost in Sunday night’s firefight.

But the potential for 100-degree temperatures and moderate winds by Thursday meant that fire officials relieved by Tuesday’s progress on the western edge of the fire were also urgently preparing to dig firebreaks to contain reinvigorated flames.

“We have a lot of fire on the ground still, but there’s a lot that can still burn,” Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner said. “We’re preparing for that and acknowledging the tough circumstances that we have.”

Tuesday night, the fire’s northern edge west of Calistoga kicked up, causing authorities to order evacuations for residents west of Highway 29 and along Highway 128 to the Napa-Sonoma county line.

Firefighters were battling to halt the fire’s northward growth and prevent its spread into Knights Valley and west to the Mark West Springs corridor.

“There's a lot of back-burning operations to contain the fire and keep it from going to the community,” Cal Fire spokesman Erick Hernandez said late Tuesday, adding that the fire was posing an “imminent threat” to rural Calistoga.

So far, authorities have estimated 28 homes were destroyed in Sonoma County and another 52 homes in Napa County, but the damage inspections were not yet complete.

The toll is likely to rise, possibly into the hundreds, Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin said. Gorin toured through some of the burned areas from Los Alamos Road, along the Highway 12 corridor and into Skyhawk, on Tuesday with Sonoma County District Fire Chief Mark Heine, and seeing the debris of burned homes brought her “right back to looking at the ashes of my house.”

“The journey is achingly familiar,” said Gorin, who lost her Oakmont home in the 2017 firestorm. “Each one of those families … will have to grapple with the severity of fire loss, move on, try to find their inner strength.”

Yet that sobering tour also included signs of the valiant firefight against a blaze Heine estimated took less than an hour to burn through rough terrain from St. Helena Road across ridgelines and down to Highway 12, Gorin said. Also, there were signs that flammable vegetation close to homes made some indefensible.

“We’re in a new era and we need to heed the lessons,” Gorin said. “Four fires in three years, three fires this year in areas that were burned already and in beautiful areas that were untouched in the Nuns fire and the Tubbs fire.”

Residents of Santa Rosa’s Skyhawk community returned to homes amid charred hillsides still moist from firefighting foam Tuesday evening, when sheriff’s officials reduced the evacuation order to a warning. Discarded firehoses and plastic water bottles littered lawns and sidewalks. Fire engine crews continued patrolling the area looking for hot spots.

Many residents pulled into their driveways to find propane tanks relocated by firefighters next to their mailboxes, and trucks and cars left behind stained with the soot of homes and vegetation burned in the fire.

Marveling at the mostly blue skies after returning home with his dachshund, Daisy, Owl’s Nest Drive resident Matt Richter said when he and his family evacuated Sunday night he was convinced they would lose their home like so many in the community displaced in the 2017 firestorm.

“I thought it was a redo. I mean, everything was on fire,” said Richter, 48, a mechanical engineer at Keysight Technologies. “It’s absolutely incredible that this neighborhood’s still here. It seems they did a good job being in the right spots to protect everything.”

Katie Franchetti, 41, returned with her 5-year-old son, Jack, after nights away with an aunt in Bodega Bay, and stood atop Owl Hill to take in a panoramic view of the area where she grew up. She felt a range of emotions to be back home, but said she was nervous about a billowing cloud of smoke on the ridgetop above the neighborhood’s trademark slope, known for its white stone cross for many years.

“I’m just soaking it in, to be honest,” said Franchetti, a local speech therapist. “I feel relief and guilt at the same time, because I’m celebrating, and yet there are people who are just devastated. This is the mountain from my childhood. I just can’t believe it’s just so scarred.”

Fire activity kept 19,000 people under orders to stay away from their homes, primarily the 5,000 residents of Oakmont, plus those living in areas east of both Calistoga Road and the Highway 12 corridor to Glen Ellen. Nearly 23,000 residents remained under an evacuation warning.

Active firefights continued Tuesday along northern and eastern edges of the wildfire, particularly in Sugarloaf’s parkland above the Sonoma Valley and the Napa Valley.

Anticipating hot days with little cooling off at night, crews were digging a critical firebreak in the park between the Gray Pine Trail and Bald Mountain. If the fire breached that line, the terrain would allow the fire to grow further south until crews could try another break at Trinity Road, Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nicholls said.

“That line has to hold,” Nicholls said.

Sugarloaf Ridge State Park Manager John Roney said the fire had been burning downhill from Bald Mountain in the direction of park headquarters, where most structures were located, including the Robert Ferguson Observatory.

Campers, hikers and park personnel, including five staffers who live in trailers on park grounds, had been evacuated from the park when the fire started moving toward Sonoma County on Sunday night. An effort to remove telescopes from the observatory on Tuesday had to be abandoned but they may try again, he said.

By Monday, the fire was in the outer reaches of the park, but there were reports that homes at the end of Adobe Canyon Road were burning, Roney said.

He said there were substantial firefighting assets in the park and an effort underway in the morning to ensure a firebreak was in place around the observatory.

Firefighters scored a big win in Trione-Annadel State Park on Monday night and into Tuesday, cutting fire lines and preventing the blaze from making a dangerous surge west into Bennett Valley and along Summerfield Road in eastern Santa Rosa.

Crews working overnight in increasingly favorable conditions relied heavily on existing trail systems in the northern portion of the park to create fire breaks.

The strategy worked. Crews were able to largely hem the blaze in and contain it to approximately 100 acres that roughly followed the Cobblestone Trail westward from Channel Drive by midday Tuesday.

Firefighting personnel increased by more than 600 people Tuesday, bringing the total firefighting force to 2,099, according to Cal Fire. Those resources allowed some local firefighters on the line to get their first break since the fire hit Sonoma County late Sunday.

Cal Fire Battalion Chief Marshall Turbeville, who also serves as Geyserville’s fire chief, went home to rest after spending much of Monday night and Tuesday morning directing firefighters and dozer crews building fire breaks on the fire’s northern edge.

“We were able to get bulldozers pretty close to the edge of the fire,” Turbeville said. “Except where it comes down at Gates and Calistoga roads — that’s a critical piece because of the many homes on Gates Road.”

While Cal Fire aircraft were flying in Napa County, heavy smoke held down by a marine layer in Sonoma County kept tankers grounded in Sonoma County. That same smoke was “acting as a lid” on the fire, reducing fire activity in Sonoma County, Nicholls said.

The offshore winds that sped flames toward the southwest across the Napa Valley on Sunday and up and over the Mayacamas Range into Sonoma County that night and early Monday have dissipated, allowing cooler, onshore breezes to take over ― and flipping fire movement.

The diminished force of the wind means the fire is now more terrain and fuel-driven than it had been, finding refuge in rugged, canyon filled hills and fuel in dense vegetation, he said.

“We’re going to be in this for a couple of weeks, is my take on this, which means it’s going to be kind of long, and it’s going to be painful for those that are dealing with it,” Gossner said. “So take a deep breath. Take care of yourself. Take care of your neighbors, and make sure that you’re doing everything you can to be part of the solution.”

Staff Writers Kerry Benefield, Nashelly Chavez and Lori A. Carter contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem. You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.