More than four days after it ignited, the wind-driven Kincade Fire surged through Sonoma County early Monday morning, burning new homes and other structures as it moved south through rugged terrain toward neighborhoods on the north edge of Santa Rosa that were ravaged by the deadly Tubbs Fire of 2017.
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But it slowed almost as quickly as it had surged by 3 a.m., bringing a sigh of relief — if only momentary — to an area ravaged over the past four days.
At 11 p.m. Sunday, as the winds kicked up, firefighters raced to the area, battling hot spots from the Shiloh community east to Mark West Springs, while warning people to flee Larkfield-Wikiup to the south, where hundreds of homes are being rebuilt after they were lost two years ago.
Structures burned on Faught Road as well as Shiloh Ridge, where palatial estates sit on spacious lots in a fire-prone area.
The hills surrounding Chalk Hill Road near Windsor glowed dark red. Smoke billowed into the roadway. Trees burned. Fire crews stationed themselves at each property along the road, working to usher the flames past without damage to the homes.
“They’re doing tactical patrol. They’re going from house to house making sure they have proper clearance, defensible space and if there’s any residents still at home, try to evacuate them,” said Rigo Herrera, a spokesman for the state’s Cal Fire agency. “And they make sure all power is out, gas and electricity is shut to the house. They make sure your windows and doors are closed. You don’t want embers to get into your house.”
Flames were also reported a few miles east near Safari West, a 400-acre wildlife preserve on Porter Creek Road that had been saved in 2017 by its founder, Peter Lang. While his own home burned, Lang spent hours racing around in his truck, dousing spot fires near the cheetah barn and the hyena pen.
The spread of the fire came after a near-apocalyptic day of horror around the Bay Area that saw blazes break out in multiple counties despite mass PG&E power outages designed to prevent just that. Fueled by a historic windstorm, the fires closed freeways, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and intensified fears that parts of California could become almost dangerous to inhabit.
The fires forced the temporary evacuations of hundreds of residents in Vallejo, Crockett, Martinez, Lafayette, Clayton and Oakley on Sunday. But the monster inferno in Sonoma County forced more than 180,000 residents to flee — with no promise they could return to their homes soon.
After 10 p.m. Sunday, David Fincher, 67, was hosing down the roof of his mobile home at a park on Old Redwood Highway north of Santa Rosa, as crews set up a line against flames raging less then a mile away.
Fincher’s neighborhood had been evacuated earlier, but as he peered off into the orange glow in the distance, he said he planned to stay until he no longer felt safe.
“I stayed last time too,” he said, referring to the Tubbs Fire. “The wind was blowing this way and then it shifted. It totally tore up Wikiup.”
At 10:30 p.m, police were making passes through a nearby Larkfield-Wikiup neighborhood, sirens blaring, to encourage any remaining residents to leave immediately as flames leaped on Faught Road.
“I’ve got clothes and my meds in the car. When I feel threatened I’ll leave,” Fincher said. “But not before then.”
Marcos Nunez, 47, who has lived on Shiloh Road for more than a decade, said, “It’s just carnage up there,” after he packed up and left.
More than 3,400 firefighters and other personnel had battled the Kincade Fire on Sunday, keeping the flames from entering dense neighborhoods in Healdsburg and Windsor and from roaring over Highway 101, which could possibly set off a rampage that could reach the Pacific Ocean.
The fire, though, did extensive damage in the Alexander Valley east of Healdsburg, ruining many homes and wineries including Salt Rock and Field Stone.
Ferocious winds reaching nearly 100 mph over the weekend turned the fire, now more than 54,000 acres — 84 square miles — into a blast furnace that had destroyed at least 94 structures, including at least three dozen homes.
The fierce winds died down early Monday morning, but firefighters were bracing for strong gusts to resume Tuesday into Wednesday.
The fire nearly doubled in size Sunday despite the numerous air tankers, dozens of bulldozers and more than 350 engine crews hopscotching across the region in an effort to get the upper hand.
Containment dipped to 5%, down from 10% percent earlier in the day. Two firefighters were injured, including one who was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento with burns. Cal Fire estimated that the fire would not be fully contained until Nov. 7.
“We’re in the heart of the battle with this fire,” said Cal Fire Division Chief Jonathan Cox. “To say the conditions are a tinderbox is probably an understatement.”
Shelters for evacuees opened in Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Marin County and San Francisco. Some shelters were powered by generators, as Pacific Gas & Electric Co. shut-offs continued to affect nearly 1 million customers across Northern California.
Among the evacuated towns were Sebastopol, Guerneville, Forestville, Occidental and Bodega Bay. Roughly 100 patients at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital were transferred to medical facilities in Novato and San Francisco. Sonoma County officials emptied a jail as well, just in case.
Just about everyone in the county was either under an evacuation order, an evacuation warning, or the power outages imposed by PG&E.
Mother and daughter Becky and Joan said they left their their home on the west side of Santa Rosa Saturday morning and headed to the Finley Community Center, only to be evacuated from there just 90 minutes later. With other shelters already full, they went to what they thought was an open site, but it was locked.
“We we’re trying to navigate the streets with no traffic lights,” said Becky, who, with her mother, declined to give their last names, fearing their personal information could be abused. “We ended up in a parking lot in the dark in our car.”
On Sunday, they made their way to the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds in Petaluma.
“It’s scary. It’s very scary,” Joan said. “For me it’s unnerving because we don’t know when we can go back.”
Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick sympathized with the tens of thousands of people displaced, but said he had no regrets about ordering evacuations.
“When this fire decides to make a run and the winds push it, you can’t win,” he said. “We lost 24 people in 2017. There is absolutely no reason to lose a human life here.”
Not everyone abided by Essick’s orders. The town of Windsor was empty Sunday except for Mike Costlow, who stayed so he could lug a 250-foot-long fire hose from house to house in his neighborhood.
There were no flames in the neighborhood, just clouds of smoke, but Costlow sweated and panted as he deftly maneuvered the hose, which he had borrowed from a retired fireman and attached to the nearby fire hydrant.
“It’s preventative,” he said. “I have too much to lose. I’m a new business owner and all my tools are in the house. It’s just impossible to lose everything.”
Elsewhere Sunday, a fire in Lafayette incinerated a tennis club near Highway 24. Fires on each side of the Carquinez Strait — one in Vallejo and one in Crockett — forced evacuations, prompted a 5-hour shutdown of Interstate 80 and the Carquinez Bridge and burned part of the California State University Maritime Academy in Vallejo.
The second biggest fire in the state, known as the Tick Fire, burned 4,615 acres in Los Angeles County, damaged or destroyed 49 structures, and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Early Monday morning, around 1:30 a.m., another fire ignited in Los Angeles, near Interstate 405 and the Getty Center museum. Mandatory evacuations were ordered in the area, not far from the location of the December 2017 Skirball Fire.
After the last two fire seasons, during which more than 100 people died, entire neighborhoods in Santa Rosa burned and the town of Paradise (Butte County) was destroyed, the series of fires caused nervousness up and down the state that the next big fire disaster was at hand.
“There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of anxiety and fear out there,” Essick said. “Your life is our priority.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom Sunday extended the state of emergency for Sonoma County to a statewide emergency because of the “unprecedented’ wind that blew embers more than a mile ahead of the main conflagration near Geyserville and forced fire crews to rush around extinguishing scores of spot fires.
The declaration will help pay for the Kincade, Tick and other fires burning in the state. Newsom said fires and power shut-offs “make for a moment in our history that we hope we don’t have to repeat.”
“The fires we’re experiencing are not completely abnormal,” he said. “What makes this moment so different are the shut-offs that overlay it. And that’s where obviously people are feeling even more stress.”
San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a local emergency to provide mutual aid for those affected by the fire, including a 200-bed shelter at Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, at 1111 Gough Street, starting at 8 a.m. Monday.
PG&E reported that equipment on one of its transmission towers broke near the Kincade Fire’s origin point shortly before the blaze was reported at 9:27 p.m. Wednesday. Power had been shut off in the area, but not on that specific transmission line, in an effort to prevent such an event.
If the investigation were to conclude that PG&E equipment ignited the Kincade Fire, it would be the latest blow for the utility, already mired in bankruptcy court and closely monitored on federal criminal probation.
Paul Doherty, a PG&E spokesman, said another wind event is forecast for Tuesday that could complicate efforts to restore power and extend blackouts into the week.
A Spare the Air alert was called for the entire Bay Area on Monday because of an anticipated shift in winds that will draw Kincade Fire smoke across the region — particularly San Francisco, the East Bay and the North Bay.
Leilani Cooper, 57, rushed through the billowing smoke in northern Windsor Sunday to save her family’s 30-year-old horse, Oliver, which had been left behind by her brother-in-law Saturday when the area was evacuated.
“He helped raise my children,” Cooper of Healdsburg said of the horse as she walked the nervous animal past a burning carport. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. I couldn’t just let him suffer.”
San Francisco Chronicle writers Kurtis Alexander, Megan Cassidy, Jill Tucker, Peter Fimrite and Tatiana Sanchez contributed to this story.
Sarah Ravani, Erin Allday and Demian Bulwa are San Chronicle staff writers. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com, eallday@sfchronicle.com, dbulwa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sarravani @erinallday @demianbulwa
