The wind again fanned flames of the massive Kincade Fire Tuesday, with firefighters bracing for yet another battle to keep the blaze from reaching homes and jumping Highway 101.
Officials advised residents to be ready to run, with 24 hours of wind gusts potentially driving the fire farther west, including the potential to breach Santa Rosa, which is still recovering from the massive losses in the 2017 Tubbs Fire.
“Anybody who lives in Sonoma County right now should be considering what to do if an evacuation warning or order comes,” said Sheriff Mark Essick. “Everybody in this area should be vigilant and have their alert up.”
A break in the wind through Tuesday morning allowed firefighters to gain ground on the fire even as they braced for the onslaught of more red-flag weather.
Containment remained at 15% as the fire burned an additional 1,000 acres to consume 75,415 acres total.
The “window of opportunity” to advance containment was closing by Tuesday afternooon, with wind gusts already reaching 30 to 40 mph on the eastern side of the fire.
About 90,000 structures are still threatened. Cal Fire officials said they hope to have the blaze fully contained by Nov. 7, but the conflagration could burn for weeks or months afterward.
Leo Clamar, 56, walked his Doberman “Chela” along Faught Road on Wednesday toward the fire line to offer first responders water or anything else they might want.
He had packed up his family and fled his home on El Mercado Parkway around 4 a.m. Sunday, when the flames got too close. His neighborhood survived when the winds shifted.
He said he hopes the near miss will be the last threat for a while even though forecasters put his neighborhood in the possible path of inferno once the winds kicked up Tuesday night into Wednesday.
“A lot of vegetation has already been burned,” he said. “They’re going to have an army of strike teams protecting the neighborhood, so I feel pretty safe.”
Cal Fire officials said they had used the lull in winds Monday to bolster protective lines around the flames with crews on land and in aircraft. The break also gave officials a chance to assess the damage of a fire that as of Tuesday morning had destroyed 124 structures, including 57 homes.
The winds should die down Wednesday afternoon, officials said, and firefighters should have five to seven days of favorable weather with no additional gusty weather forecast.
But first, they would contend with unpredictable gusts reaching up to 70 mph at the highest peaks.
“We need to get through the wind that’s anticipated tonight,” said Cal Fire Division Chief Jonathan Cox, adding the focus will be on holding the line at Highway 101. “That will be the test this evening when the wind comes through.”
No rain is currently in the forecast.
Firefighters fanned out along the fire’s southwestern perimeter along Faught and Chalk Hill roads on Tuesday afternoon, ready to attack flare-ups and prevent another runaway inferno.
Crews had stopped the flames from advancing into nearby populated areas of Santa Rosa, Larkspur, Windsor and Healdsburg Sunday, but again, with blustery winds headed their way, everyone feared the worst.
All red-flag warnings are expected to expire at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
The fire, which started late last Wednesday, forced an estimated 185,000 people to evacuate.
Even as the region faced a red-flag warning for increased fire danger, the county was also looking at a “code blue,” with freezing temperatures expected during the nights this week, said Supervisor David Rabbitt.
Evacuees sleeping in cars and RVs should be aware of the cold weather as well as those in homes without heat or power.
There were 21 shelters open across the region, with a capacity of 5,000, with space still available, Rabbitt said. Six shelters were at capacity Tuesday afternoon.
“Take care of each other. Check on your neighbors,” he said. “We will recover form this event and it’s best if we can do it together.”
Meanwhile, more than 265,000 PG&E customers across Northern California were expected to experience preemptive power cuts starting at 7 a.m, with blackouts continuing through the end of the night.
In Cloverdale, residents were not under evacuation orders, but had been without power since Saturday.
Mike Morisette, who owns Plank Coffee, decided to open a pop-up location Monday and Tuesday at their roasting facility where he had a generator, serving drip coffee, pastries and other food.
More than 150 people were lined up at one point to buy a cup of brewed coffee and a small sense of normalcy, Morisette said.
It was a way to salvage $30,000 worth of perishable food and bring in some of their employees, who were losing critical wages, Morisette said. As long as the fire stayed at bay, he hoped to open the pop-up again Wednesday.
“They’re all chomping at the bit to get back to work and start making money to pay rent, pay bills again,” he said of his 50 employees. “Many of them rely on every shift, so we’re going to try to figure out if there’s something we can do to make ends meet until life hopefully gets back somewhat to normal.”
The Kincade blaze, driven by ferocious winds reaching nearly 100 mph over the weekend, left behind a landscape of charred hillsides, scorched vineyards, burned-out wineries, and the ruins of area homes and mansions. The neighborhoods threatened early Monday were similarly attacked by flames in the 2017 Tubbs Fire that devastated several Santa Rosa communities.
More than 4,500 firefighters were battling the inferno, including many from nearby states, with hundreds of law enforcement officers and the National Guard supporting the efforts.
Cox and other authorities said they understood that residents were eager to return to their homes, but it was too soon to say when more areas would be repopulated. Shelters for evacuees opened in Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Marin County and San Francisco. Some shelters were powered by generators due to PG&E shut-offs.
The cause of the Kincade Fire is still unknown. PG&E reported that equipment on one of its transmission towers broke near the 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.
For many residents, the Kincade Fire resurrected memories of the 2017 inferno. Some whose homes were destroyed two years ago by the Tubbs Fire feared they would lose their new homes too.
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Leonel Miranda Martinez, 47, spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday sleeping in his car at the Target store in Rhonert Park. A sheriff’s deputy told him to evacuate as the fire advanced toward his home in the Orchard Park mobile home park on Old Redwood Highway between Hwy 101 and the southern edge of the fire.
So far, the park has made it through. Standing outside his home Tuesday after taking an ice-cold shower, Martinez looked out at the smoky hillside to the east where firefighters were concentrating their efforts.
“If they say we have to leave, I’ll go — it’s better to be safe,” he said. “You never know what could happen.”
Megan Cassidy, Evan Sernoffsky and Jill Tucker are San Chronicle staff writers. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com, esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, jtucker@sfchronicle.com, megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy @jilltucker @evansernoffsky
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Winds pick up Tuesday as crews work to hold line on massive Kincade Fire - San Francisco Chronicle
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