With Whipping Winds and Power Down, Californians Flee Fires

On Saturday, they moved from a rental home in the town of Windsor into the house in Santa Rosa they are still rebuilding. Twelve hours later, at around 4 in the morning, they again fled amid rapidly expanding evacuation orders. “It’s been like hell,” Rivas, 37, said. “We had no water, no power, no anything.”

Worry gave way to panic across a huge swath of Northern California as officials ordered more than 100,000 additional people to leave because of the Kincade Fire, more than doubling those under mandatory evacuation to 180,000 people. The evacuations came as the state’s largest utility cut power to as many as 2.7 million people, the largest power shut-off to prevent wildfires in California history.

It was the third time in a month that the utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, had shut off power in the area to prevent its equipment from sparking fire in dry, windy weather. As residents fled the fire without power, and some lost cellphone service, anger at the utility company grew, with many complaining that the blackouts put residents in fire zones in more danger, not less.

Significant vulnerabilities in the state’s out-of-date private utility infrastructure have converged with the realities of extreme weather in California, made worse by climate change, to produce a crisis that is pushing the state’s disaster response capabilities to the brink.

On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency, urging people in evacuation zones to take warnings, however they got them, seriously.

“We are deploying every resource available,” Newsom said.

For four days, firefighters have been struggling to contain the Kincade Fire, which spread to 30,000 acres overnight and was just 10% contained Sunday, according to Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency. The fire, which has destroyed 79 buildings — including 31 homes — has been driven by dry conditions and winds gusting to 80 mph or more. The wind can send embers flying up to 1 mile away, touching off spot fires that can grow quickly, fire officials said.

Officials went house to house overnight, knocking on doors to inform residents of new evacuation orders. The evacuation zone now encompasses a huge swath of land in Sonoma county, from coastal towns like Carmet along the Pacific Ocean, through the Alexander Valley wine country and toward Napa Valley in the northwest.

In Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, the threat posed by the Kincade Fire has wreaked havoc on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Thick smoke blocked several sections of U.S. Highway 101 near Santa Rosa on Sunday, closing a crucial transportation artery and sowing confusion as evacuees attempted to map their next steps. Cars and trucks hauling horse trailers and campers were backed up for miles on the southbound side of the freeway, some with bedding, large suitcases or pets crammed inside.

Gusts of wind were still powerful enough to rattle windows and shake trees shedding fall foliage Sunday. A thick layer of gray smoke hung over much of central Sonoma County. Small fleets of bright blue PG&E; trucks, ambulances and fire trucks also streamed through the area.

Before Andrea Vincent and her family lost power Saturday night in Cotati, California, just outside the evacuation zone, they filled bathtubs and sinks with enough drinking water to last them several days. The family’s home is on a well system, like many in semirural parts of the region, and the system does not work when there is no power. Vincent bought portable battery packs to keep her phone charged to stay up to date on potential fire evacuations.

“Some people have generators, but they’re selling out,” she said. “I would have loved to have bought one but, believe it or not, we’re still coming back from the recession, and I just didn’t have the cash.”

Two miles from the mandatory evacuation zone, she said her family had slept fitfully Saturday night, fearful that the high winds could force them to evacuate without much warning.

“It was bad,” she said. “It was very bad. I’ve never seen it like that. It blew our front door open.”

The lengthy intentional blackouts, coupled with unintended outages caused by the high winds, have pushed emergency responders into uncharted territory when it comes to communicating with residents. Cell towers require power. They typically have a backup power source when the electric grid goes down, but those emergency sources usually last no more than 24 to 48 hours — a challenge for the telecom system during a power shut-off that could stretch beyond two days.

In addition, residents might find it difficult to keep their cellphones charged during the widespread blackouts, and may not receive notices like evacuation orders even when the cell towers are working.

“These power shut-offs are adding complexity to emergency response,” said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for California emergency services. As evacuation orders continue to expand, he said, a lack of reliable communication service is causing concern. PG&E; issued more warnings Sunday about potential power shut-offs Tuesday and Wednesday, affecting 32 counties.

Already, extreme weather in California, from devastating fires to mudslides and flooding, has walloped people in the region, casting a spotlight on the growing challenges that climate change presents to those living in the West. Eric Jorgenson and Carol Waltz had just finished installing new carpet Saturday in their Forestville home, which was ravaged by flooding earlier this year along the Russian River.

Later that day, they had to evacuate because of the Kincade Fire.

For firefighters, the high winds are making their work far more difficult.

“We’ve got rates of spread that are extremely dangerous at this point, with erratic fire behavior,” said Capt. Stephen Volmer, a fire behavior analyst at Cal Fire.

The possibility that the fire could jump across Highway 101 from the eastern side to the west is a growing fear, given that there is more fuel and less-recent experience of wildfires on that side of the highway.

“That area hasn’t seen any fire history since the 1940s,” Volmer said, adding that the vegetation in that area is extremely dense, old and dry.

Sheriff Mark Essick of Sonoma County said there had been no reports of looting, and that hundreds of police officers were stationed in evacuation areas to help people leave and keep their properties safe while they are away.

“Although I’ve heard some people express concerns that we’re evacuating too many people, I think those concerns are not valid at this point,” he said.

Paul Doherty, a PG&E; spokesman, said Sunday morning that the decision to include 20,000 more customers in Fresno and Madera was made late Saturday night as forecasts became clearer.

“If your power is going to be turned off, you will be notified,” Doherty said. “We have contacted all of those customers who had their power turned off, where we can.”

PG&E; has called for aid from power companies across North America, requesting 1,000 utility workers to assist with the growing wildfire threat as well as fire prevention efforts.

Electric workers from as far away as Washington state, Florida and Canada have responded so far with 129 people. “This is an international effort,” Doherty said.

During the recent large-scale power outage, Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, railed against the telecommunications industry for failing to ensure that cell towers and general services remained in operation during the blackouts. He said the industry was not responding to the state’s needs.

“Verizon is prepared to keep customers connected during any disruption in commercial power,” Heidi Flato, a Verizon spokeswoman, said in an email, but acknowledged that “there are discrete areas of our network that will experience service disruption or degradation” because of the outages.

Inside the Petaluma Community Center, numbers swelled to capacity, with more than 350 people seeking shelter, said Drew Halter, a city recreation supervisor tapped to run the shelter. With winds still blowing and freeways still gridlocked Sunday, officials said that they planned to open other shelters as far south as Marin County.

To help Sonoma fire victims, Napa County opened shelters at the Napa Valley College gym as well as the Fairgrounds and Crosswalk Church in the city.

But Napa County faced its own challenges, as winds gusting to 88 mph at Mount Saint Helena caused widespread power outages in addition to PG&E;’s intentional blackouts.

“It’s been pretty eye-popping numbers,” said Noel Brinkerhoff, a Napa County spokesman. “The winds are knocking out power and traffic lights.”

Anita Wiget, 72, said she had never been ordered to evacuate in 34 years. She was part of a four-car caravan with nine people and several dogs that left a mobile home park in the coastal town of Bodega Bay Saturday night, just as their power was expected to go out.

“We slept in the car because of the dogs,” Wiget said Sunday. “It’s not what you call real comfortable, but at least we have a place to go.”

This time around, Rivas, who fled the Coffey Park Fire two years ago, said her family had time to pack some clothes, a pet guinea pig and a few plastic storage bins, but she still thinks about the baby pictures that she lost forever the last time fire ravaged this corner of Wine Country.

“It’s just so much in such a short time,” Rivas said. “We all agreed as a family that if that rebuilt house burns down again, we might just move out of the area.”

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