Kincade fire evacuations expand as fire officials brace for historic winds
Public safety officials are bracing for the worst fire conditions since the North Bay firestorm of 2017 in an environment already saturated with smoke and apprehension as a wildfire rages in the mountains above Geyserville.
With gusts up to 80 mph expected for the highest elevations this weekend, it’s hard to say what’s worrying them most: the prospect of the nearly 24,000-acre Kincade fire blowing up substantially or the fear that a spark ignited during historically extreme winds could start the next catastrophic California wildfire.
A widespread preemptive blackout scheduled for about 93,000 PG&E customers in Sonoma County, as well as 200 households served by Healdsburg’s municipal electric department, may have some preventive impact. But after a similar outage just two days earlier, the shutdown compounded a siege mentality for some, which has been exacerbated by dangerously poor air quality.
Late Friday, the mandatory evacuation zone inched south toward Healdsburg and east toward Knights Valley.
Bright flames visible Friday night from Highway 101 and the Healdsburg area provoked anxiety in the wake of a significant flare-up inside the fire zone earlier in the day. Ambulances raced up Pine Flat Road as a dark plume of smoke rose overhead, then spilled across the county below.
Cal Fire officials later said a firefighter came across two civilians attempting to evacuate the area as flames intensified. He was forced to deploy his portable emergency shelter and managed to shield all three of them from the flames, though they suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the incident, Cal Fire said.
The people involved were taken by ground ambulance to a nearby hospital for treatment and all were expected to survive, Cal Fire said.
As the potential for more evacuations grew, emergency officials spoke frequently of the need for residents to prepare ahead of time and act without hesitation if they are told to flee the path of danger.
“When we call for evacuations, or if we have to call for evacuations, it’s not a suggestion,” Cal Fire Division Chief Jonathan Cox said during a Friday evening news conference. “It is an order - that we believe there is an imminent life threat to you and your property. So as we go forward though this wind event, if additional evacuations are called for, it is going to be imperative, 100 percent, that people heed those and get out early.”
Friday night’s evacuations covered areas including Ida Clayton Road, Alexander Valley Road near Jimtown; Highland Ranch Road and areas around Asti, east of Highway 101; and rural areas between the fire and the Mendocino and Lake county lines.
Northern unincorporated Healdsburg has been under evacuation warning since Wednesday night, while warnings were issued Friday evening for the Cobb Mountain communities of Gifford Springs, Whispering Pines, Anderson Springs, Adams Springs, Hobergs and Cobb in Lake County, as well as those living on Ford Flat and Socrates Mine roads. Anyone who may need extra time to gather pets or pack essential items such as medications was encouraged to prepare in the event of a mandatory evacuation.
Already, about 2,000 people are under mandatory evacuation from Geyserville and rural communities around the Alexander Valley and up into the Mayacamas Range toward The Geysers geothermal fields, since the Kincade fire started Wednesday night.
As of Friday night, the wildfire remained just 5 percent contained and had grown slightly to 23,700 acres, expanding primarily on the eastern flank in rugged terrain, Cal Fire said.
Forty-nine structures have been destroyed, including what Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said were 21 homes and 28 outbuildings, though Cal Fire and the county have just begun their formal damage assessment, Emergency Management Director Christopher Godley said.
In the meantime, the county emergency operations center was abuzz with preparations for weather conditions meteorologists are casting in “historic” terms, as the region’s fuels reach their driest, most combustible point, with high sustained winds and extreme gusts on the horizon, as well as critically low humidity levels.
Fire officials said conditions could match or surpass those of October 2017, when multiple fire erupted in the North Bay, burning across Sonoma County and Napa counties, killing 40 people in the North Bay and burning more than 6,100 homes.
“If you look at the past three years, all of the large and damaging fires have occurred this time of year, during the offshore wind event period, and particularly during the red flag warnings,” Cox said. “Although we’ve had minimal fire activity this year, all our fuels are now hitting that critical stage. You kind of compound that with the fact we’re going to see a potentially historic wind event, it has us highly concerned that the vulnerable areas of California could see some explosive fires.”
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