Spared in prior years, part of northeast Santa Rosa loses scores of homes in Glass fire

Gray ash rained onto the neighborhoods of northeastern Santa Rosa by daybreak Monday, hours after firefighters made an overnight stand against wind-driven wildfire that came suddenly from the east, first as a glow atop the ridge, and then as raging, miles-wide front of flames.

Residents here have been menaced by wildfire before. They evacuated by the thousands three times in the past four years. The giant fires of 2017 and 2019 spared them.

This time, however, the firestorm raced into hillside subdivisions, burning scores of homes above Rincon Valley and at the northern end of the Valley of the Moon along Highway 12.

In the Skyhawk neighborhood, at least 15 homes were destroyed, with most of the damage centered on a single block of Mountain Hawk Drive. In Piedmont Heights, the fire gutted at least four homes. Further south and west, the fire destroyed numerous homes and structures near Highway 12 and Melita Road, including houses along Somerville and Kertsinger roads north of the highway.

The Glass fire originated in Napa County in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday and merged later with another inferno it sparked, the Shady fire. The flames came rampaging into Sonoma County hours after nightfall, forcing thousands of Santa Rosa residents from Oakmont in the south to Calistoga Road in the north to flee.

The damage appeared to be most severe in the neighborhood of Jas Sihota, a Mountain Hawk Drive resident who sent his wife and two boys to safety Sunday night after he saw the maple tree in the front yard bend amid stiff winds.

“I knew it was a matter of time,” he said, noting a history of close calls with fire that many residents can recite off-hand.

The deadly 2017 firestorm split in the hills above these subdivisions, the Tubbs fire veering off to the north, the Nuns fire to the south. The even larger Kincade fire last year forced residents to flee but did not come as close.

On Sunday, Sihota, 49, a Kaiser Permanente radiology technician, stayed behind, arming himself with a garden hose and defying evacuation orders. His home and several others on the block survived.

“I’m no cowboy, but I just didn’t want to lose my house,” he said.

Homes across the street and several on Wildwood Trail farther south were reduced to rubble. Amid the heavy smoke and ongoing firefight, authorities were unable to say how many homes were lost.

On Monday after sunrise, fire crews chatted as they patrolled hot spots in the ruins of homes, blasting them with water from atop their engines. In quiet of an abandoned neighborhood, natural gas hissed from ruptured pipes and flames danced on the end of broken fixtures.

Less than 12 hours before, police sirens had blared and cellphones screeched, warning residents to get out. The exodus on Calistoga Road and Highway 12 resulted in miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic.

For Piedmont Heights, St. Francis and Skyhawk neighborhoods, the evacuation order came at 10:49 p.m. via Nixle, the emergency alert service. By then, the orange glow to the east had reared up as visible flames. They consumed trees and coughed embers hundreds of feet into the sky.

St. Francis residents on Yerba Buena Road, who had yet to leave, pointed and watched in awe as spot fires started up along the western flanks of the Mayacamas Mountains, above their homes.

Terry Seda had left with her husband from their Yerba Buena Road home two hours earlier, at about 9:15 p.m. But she came back for their wedding rings. She greeted the flames with a kind of resignation.

“I was crying earlier, but now it is what it is,” she said, as she held her phone up to show her husband the flames and embers on a video call. “I told my husband this is the only mountain left in Sonoma County that hasn’t burned.”

Farther east on Yerba Buena, flames on Los Alamos Road topping the ridge above Skyhawk, threatening homes on Sunhawk Drive. Numerous fire engines parked in front to protect homes in the new development, as firefighters raced down several cul-de-sacs, pounding on doors and calling out for people to evacuate, if they hadn’t already done so.

To the northwest, along the slopes facing Piedmont Heights, the fire plowed crackled through slopes of dry grass, brush and trees. At the east end of Montclair Drive, ground crews lit backfires to protect homes on Rinaldo Street.

The fire tore into homes on the north side of Mountain Hawk Drive between Nighthawk Drive and Brigadoon Way, where the damage on that block along alone fueled flames that raged into the morning.

About 1:30 a.m., the wind-whipped flames jumped Highway 12 north of Oakmont, where three homes were destroyed.

In the dark and through daybreak, the clatter of bulldozers and whine of chainsaws sounded across the slopes, as firefighters cut breaks in the brush to slow the flames’ spread.

Paul Lowenthal, Santa Rosa’s assistant fire marshal and a Cal Fire spokesman, credited early and orderly evacuations and strategic positioning of fire crews with saving thousands of homes.

“There’s a lot of lessons learned,” he said, comparing coordinated overnight efforts to miscommunication, chaos and surrender of 2017, when 24 people died and 5,300 homes were lost in Sonoma County. Firefighters focused on saving lives and were largely powerless until the winds died down.

“In this particular case, it was very clear that you had entire strike teams moving into neighborhoods,” he said. “There were areas where all you saw was engines.”

David Cox, 75, whose home on Rinaldo Street was among those saved by a backburn, said he was grateful for the hard work of the firefighters. He said ferocity of the fire was shocking.

“I sure didn’t expect this whole mountain to go up like it did,” Cox said.

After evacuating to Bennett Valley the night before with their three kids, couple Paula and Gustavo Flores returned Monday morning in their silver minivan to discover their Skyhawk home on Mountain Hawk Drive was left mostly unscathed.

Parts of the garage windows had melted off onto the pavement at the head of the driveway.

The uncertainty of nearly annual flights from fire since 2017 has taken an emotional toll on the family.

“You do have some PTSD and it’s just, it’s hard,” Paula Flores said. “It’s definitely something you think you’re over and done with and don’t have to repeat it, but you end up going through it again. It’s devastating.”

Just south of Skyhawk, at Trione-Annadel State Park, flames continued to test firefighters well into Monday afternoon.

Michael Sullivan, 67, who grew up in Santa Rosa and knows its big fires by memory, could only watch Sunday night and early Monday morning as the Glass fire menaced his neighborhood in the hills just south of Annadel. He saw it spot along Channel Drive to his east and then devour trees, vehicles and homes.

“It just went down like fingers of lava,” Sullivan said. “No air support, no nothing ― just a ton of sirens just doing the best they could.”

Santa Rosa seemed better prepared than it did three years ago, Sullivan said. The system of digital alerts about evacuation notices can be a little difficult to decipher, he said, but the surge of alerts from local authorities is an improvement over the lack of warnings in 2017.

Still, he was one of those who stayed put in an evacuation zone, a move that authorities strongly discourage. Sullivan signaled he was unlikely to leave until the wind was depositing embers on his roof ― covering the house where he and his late wife raised their children.

“Even though my family’s grown, my wife’s gone — breaks my heart — I’m still happy here,” he said. “Even though this calamity doesn’t help anybody.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @kfixler. You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno. You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.