Wildfire smoke darkens North Bay skies and extends region’s record run of foul air

Heading south on Highway 101 toward her home in Ukiah Tuesday afternoon, Ginny Buccelli took photos of a pumpkin-orange sky so dark other motorists had their headlights on and freeway lamps were lit.

“It was apocalyptic,” said Buccelli, an English professor at Mendocino College. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The smoke was so bad Buccelli and her husband, Joe, donned N95 masks in their car and still suffered from the foul air.

“It was making my chest hurt and gave my husband a headache,” she said.

Smoke cast a heavy pall Tuesday over the North Bay and much of California and the West Coast. Local sources included the eruption Monday of a new fire that closed Highway 101 about 20 miles north of Ukiah, a flareup Monday night of Sonoma County’s Walbridge fire and continued growth of the 325,000-acre August Complex fires in the Mendocino National Forest, spread over five counties and just 23% contained.

Smoke was visible in all of the region’s mountaintop wildfire cameras, completely obscuring the view from some of them. The pollution extended the consecutive run of unhealthy air in the Bay Area into its fourth week.

It has also triggered an increase in people visiting hospital emergency rooms and calling their physicians for help with the consequences of inhaling smoky air.

Wednesday will mark the 23rd straight Spare the Air warning, and the third consecutive day aligned with a red flag alert from the National Weather Service, which said offshore winds with gusts up to 50 mph in the highest elevations were forecast through 8 a.m. Wednesday.

The longest previous streak of Spare the Air Days was 14 days during the 2018 Camp fire in Butte County, the deadliest and most destructive blaze in state history.

“It is a lot of unhealthy air,” said Aaron Richardson of the regional air district, which rated air in the entire northern zone, including from Petaluma and Sonoma up to Windsor, as harmful to sensitive groups Tuesday, with similar conditions expected Wednesday.

The vulnerable groups include seniors, children and people with diabetes, heart and lung disease.

In Willits, at the south end of the 860-acre Oak Fire that closed Highway 101, air was rated hazardous Tuesday, the worst rating, where conditions are perilous to people of all ages.

And the assault is not over, with 25 major wildfires burning in California Tuesday and somewhat cooler but windy weather in store.

Wind gusts on Tuesday could reach 45 to 65 mph in the North Bay mountains, the weather service said. A peak gust of 70 to 80 mph over Mt. St. Helena “isn’t out of the question,” the forecast said, evoking conditions that blasted the 2017 Tubbs fire from Calistoga to Santa Rosa in four hours.

“Critical fire weather and extreme heat will be with us for the next few days, thus we anticipate increased fire activity throughout the region,” said a report Tuesday from the U.S. Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program.

Wildfires have now scorched more than 2.2 million acres this year, a state record, with another four months to go in fire season, Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of Cal Fire, said Tuesday. The blazes have taken eight lives and destroyed more than 3,300 structures.

A prolonged streak of inhaling smoky air hits people suffering from lung diseases, such as asthma and emphysema, especially hard, said Dr. Vinayak Jha, a pulmonologist with Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

They can quickly go from feeling well to wheezing, shortness of breath and bronchitis, he said.

Children up to age 3 are also vulnerable because they breathe more air per pound of body weight than other ages.

Most healthy adults will experience short-term discomforts which they can avoid by going indoors and postponing outdoor activity “until the next good day,” Jha said.

Dr. Gary Green, medical director of quality at Sutter Medical Group of the Redwoods, said people suffering from chronic lung disease can suffer from smoky air in one or two days, reflected by an ongoing uptick in emergency room visits and calls to physicians.

“They’re already breathing on a margin of lung capacity,” he said.

There’s also a psychological impact from living with smoke and fires, Green said, describing it as “an oppressive feeling of worldwide calamity.”

“Everyone is feeling the psychological strain of what tomorrow is going to bring,” he said.

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