What Sonoma County learned from wildfire evacuations

Trapped in gridlock on Highway 12 last fall as the Glass fire closed in, Steve O’Rourke experienced high anxiety in a car with his cat, computer, four guitars and a change of clothes.

“At Melita Road, we could see flames coming over the mountain. It was moving pretty quickly,” he recalled. “Everybody was getting nervous.”

O’Rourke, an Oakmont resident, was among the 48,000 people ordered to vacate a vast swath of east Santa Rosa the night of Sept. 27 when the wind-driven blaze born in Napa County crested the Mayacamas Mountains.

Thousands of evacuees shared his ordeal as their vehicles crawled west on the highway in the darkness, and many still question — with another ominous fire season ahead — why they were placed in that predicament.

But the Glass fire evacuation was, despite the traffic jam, “a huge success,” said Paul Lowenthal, Santa Rosa’s assistant fire marshal.

The vacated area enabled fire engines to move against the 67,484-acre blaze on empty roads, and the fire’s toll, destroying 34 homes in Santa Rosa and 300 more outside the city, was comparatively modest, he said.

And it marked a turning point in Sonoma County’s response to the potential disaster — and existential threat of more frequent and severe wildfires — that haunts the summer and arid autumn to come.

When O’Rourke months later recalled his bitter experience to some Santa Rosa police officers, their response was blunt: The plan “went perfectly: did anyone die?”

“I was just astounded,” he said.

Lowenthal drew a contrast with the Tubbs fire of 2017, which also roared in from Napa County, killing 22 people and leveling more than 4,600 homes, including more than 3,000 in Santa Rosa.

With no advance warning or evacuation, firefighters and police spent much of that October night rescuing residents in the firestorm’s path rather than battling the flames.

Much has changed since then, as the North Bay braces for the potential onslaught of fires that experts say can ignite almost anywhere, including the footprints of 23 major blazes totaling nearly 1.5 million acres — the equivalent of 130% of Sonoma County — from 2015 through 2020.

Two big differences are the network of more than 50 wildfire detection cameras on mountaintops throughout the North Bay and the arrival late this month of a $24 million helicopter at a Cal Fire base in Lake County.

Aerial firefighting

The sleek, twin-engine Fire Hawk, one of a dozen bought by the state, carries a 1,000-gallon tank on its belly and has a cruising speed of 160 mph that can get it from the Boggs Mountain Helitack Base north of Middletown to Santa Rosa in about 10 minutes.

The Fire Hawks replace the Cal Fire’s aging Super Huey helicopters that carry 300 gallons of water.

Aerial firefighting is critical to the agency’s goal of holding 95% of wildfires to 10 acres or less, said Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nicholls, who oversees Sonoma County.

The typical fire dispatch statewide includes two air tankers and one helicopter, he said.

Additional resources

The agency has also acquired computer software technology called Wildfire Analyst that uses weather and fuel conditions to assess whether a wildfire is likely to expand and how many homes and other structures lie in its path, Nicholls said.

Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit has also hired an additional 70 firefighters, boosting its ranks to 545 uniformed personnel at peak staffing beginning June 14.

Sonoma County has provided money for two strike teams — totaling 10 engines — to operate in addition to regular staffing during fire and high wind warning periods.

The teams are “quick attack resources to minimize growth of new fire starts,” Sonoma County Fire District Chief Mark Heine said.

Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit reported 153 fires covering 279 acres this year, and Cal Fire listed 2,878 significant blazes over 16,800 acres statewide, including 10 in January.

Artificial intelligence

At the Redcom emergency communications center in Santa Rosa, dispatchers monitor 52 North Bay ALERTWildfire cameras on a media wall, all equipped with artificial intelligence that issues an alert when it spots a fire.

The AI technology can distinguish smoke from clouds, steam and geysers and indicates the direction the rotating camera is aimed when it sees smoke, said KT McNulty, Redcom executive director.

Aiming a second camera at the smoke determines its exact location, she said, noting the infrared cameras can see smoke at night and cover all of Sonoma County, except parts of Santa Rosa where they are not needed.

On May 4, a camera detected a minor fire at Pepperwood Preserve north of Santa Rosa 10 minutes before the first 911 call from the public. It was a controlled burn that had smoldered for weeks before reigniting.

The cameras played a crucial role in the Glass fire, pinpointing it at night in Napa Valley, Lowenthal said. Along with observations from a Cal Fire spotter airplane, officials determined the fire would likely reach Santa Rosa.

“We were comfortable calling for the evacuation knowing we had two to three hours for people to evacuate and for traffic to subside,” he said.

There were no fire cameras in 2017.

About 270,000 people — equal to more than half the county’s population — were evacuated in 2019 and 2020, some of them more than once, said Chris Godley, the county's emergency management director.

The Kincade fire of 2019, the largest in county history, displaced 180,000 evacuees and the Glass fire, with 48,000, accounted for 84% of the total.

Planning ahead

The outlook isn’t promising, with the drought and possibly higher than average temperatures drying out grasses, brush and trees and making them burn hotter and generate more “fire wind” than usual, Godley said.

Emergency management officials may issue evacuation warnings — which precede evacuation orders — earlier than usual, he said. People who feel uneasy with the warning should consider moving out prior to an order, Godley said.

The county’s revised evacuation zone map, issued last month and covering the nine cities as well as surrounding rural areas, enables officials to “dial in” evacuation orders to manage traffic, he said.

“We can evacuate as many as we need at a time to keep the number of people on the roads to a minimum,” Godley said.

Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins said she has mental health concerns over “the repeated trauma of being displaced” by evacuations.

“I know a lot of folks have PTSD” triggered by the sound of a siren or a red flag fire warning, she said, referring to the post-traumatic stress disorder associated with combat veterans.

There’s also a troubling issue of “evacuation fatigue” prompting people who have been through more than one displacement to ignore future orders, stay put and defend their home, if necessary, Hopkins said.

Calling that a “dangerous mindset,” Hopkins said it simply derives from good luck.

Her west county district could see evacuation gridlock in the lower Russian River area — from Forestville to Duncans Mills including Cazadero — where about 20,000 residents would depend on River Road and Highway 116, both winding, two-lane roads.

Thousands more visitors will be on the coast and along the river during the summer, she said.

Other areas susceptible to gridlock include Kenwood on Highway 12, the hills above Geyserville where the Kincade fire ignited in 2019, as well as Fitch Mountain and Camp Meeker, which have one-way-in and one-way-out roads, Godley said.

Oakmont, with 4,700 residents, has an alternative way out on Channel Drive, a gated emergency access road that can be opened during evacuations, Lowenthal said. It was opened during the Glass fire but residents were not directed to it, he said.

Highway 12 can be converted to a one-way route, but it requires a lot of CHP assistance, officials said.

After evacuation

Crista Barnett Nelson, executive director of the nonprofit Senior Advocacy Services, said the community shelters for fire evacuees lack the care for people who need assistance walking, eating and toileting.

During the Glass fire, it took more than a week to get some people from a Petaluma shelter into an appropriate living center. “That’s too long. It’s just not safe,” she said.

People in “lost memory care” need an especially high level of care because they “literally can’t find their way,” Nelson said.

Godley said he is aware of the need to expand medical, psychological and nutritional services at shelters.

“It’s not just a cot on the floor,” he said.

Residents must take responsibility for planning how to cope with wildfires, said Sgt. Juan Valencia, a spokesman for the county Sheriff’s office. “Know your (evacuation) zone; know your multiple escape routes,” he said.

If you live in a zone adjacent to one ordered to evacuate and “you feel uncomfortable, you should go,” Valencia said.

“Know how to open your garage door if the power goes off,” he said. “If worse comes to worst, drive right through it.”

State law requires all garage doors sold after July 1, 2019 must have a backup battery to operate in the event of a power failure.

O’Rourke, the Oakmont evacuee, said it took him an hour on Highway 12 to reach Queen Anne Drive, where a police officer turned cars around to head east toward Sonoma.

He made his way down to Petaluma, then up Highway 101 to Santa Rosa, reaching his fiancee’s home in two and a half hours.

Tom Kendrick, another Oakmont resident, said he was stuck on the subdivision’s Pythian Road exit from 10 p.m. until midnight, waiting to get on Highway 12, which was no longer jammed.

With most residents prepared for evacuation, many are thinking “don’t wait until they tell you to go,” he said.

“That’s great,” Godley said by way of endorsement.

“We face a regular and sustained threat from these dynamic fires that move so quickly and cause so much damage,” he said. “Rather than being fearful we’ve moved to a place where we can meet this head-on.”

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.