Watch CA Firefighters Tackle Devastating Shady Fire

The North Bay’s Wine Country once again became a scene of chaos on Sunday and early Monday as wildfires blazed on both the east and west sides of the Napa Valley. The out-of-control flames engulfed numerous homes, at least one winery and a nearby inn, while forcing harried late-night evacuations as flames raced west over rolling hills toward Santa Rosa.

Flames fueled by fast winds and extremely dry conditions were simultaneously threatening parts of Sonoma and Napa counties, plus the Butte County town of Paradise, the places most badly burned by extreme wildfires in 2017 and 2018.

Authorities have issued a series of evacuation warnings and orders in both places, as the fast-moving Shady and Glass fires spread in Wine Country and the massive North Complex fire in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills blows up during a red-flag warning of extreme fire danger.

In Sonoma County, flames forced mandatory evacuations for several neighborhoods on the east edge of Santa Rosa, including the 4,500-resident Oakmont senior community, along with surrounding areas along Highway 12, the main road linking the city to the Sonoma Valley. Residents in the Kenwood area were ordered to evacuate just after midnight.

Those places were all affected by the October 2017 Wine Country wildfires that burned entire neighborhoods in and around Santa Rosa. One of those fires, the Tubbs Fire, was the second-most destructive wildfire in California history.

In Butte County, the month-old North Complex fire has picked up amid the dangerous weather, prompting an evacuation warning for the entire town of Paradise and the community of Magalia, along with an evacuation order for Concow. All three of those places were devastated by the November 2018 Camp Fire, the state’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire.

“It really is horrifying to see this happening...again,” tweeted climate scientist Daniel Swain. “Winds tonight are not expected to be as extreme as during Oct. 2017 North Bay (Tubbs) firestorm, but this does not look good. Really does appear this could make it to eastern Santa Rosa by morning.”

Residents of the senior community of Oakmont Village were being evacuated on Santa Rosa city buses at 12:30 a.m., many of them using walkers and canes, or being pushed in wheelchairs. One woman in a purple robe had a black shirt on a hanger clinging to her walker. Another woman in a wheelchair was in flowered pajamas with a white teddy bear in her lap.

Towering flames shot up over a hill just across the driveway as the buses headed toward the winding Calistoga Road into Santa Rosa.

Wind gusts reached 60 miles per hour on Mount St. Helena on Sunday evening, with the winds blowing toward the southwest. By 11:30 p.m., a long line of cars with evacuating residents was seen on Montgomery Road in Santa Rosa, driving away from Annadel State Park. Sirens were wailing, as a red glow lit up the surrounding hills. Flames were visible from Highway 101 along the eastern edge of the city.

“I grabbed my neighbor. I wouldn’t take no for an answer,” said Lorraine Fuentez, who evacuated from a senior mobile home park on Calistoga Road around 11:30 p.m. Sunday, forcing her elderly friend to come with her. Fuentez said she and her neighbor got multiple alerts to leave, and quickly grabbed their go-bags, which have been put to more use than she ever expected. She evacuated in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which burned down her daughter’s house.

“We’ve come to the point that if it burns down, oh well,” Fuentez said. “It feels overwhelming. It feels like, is this ever going to end?”

The scenario unfolding around Santa Rosa has unsettling similarities to the deadly firestorm that ravaged the area almost exactly three years ago, both in terms of weather patterns and the communities being threatened.

The Glass Fire, which began early Sunday morning in the Deer Park area and grew to 2,500 acres by evening, threatened thousands of structures along the east side of the Silverado Trail and prompted numerous evacuations throughout Sunday, including of the local hospital and the high-end Meadowood Napa Valley resort. Photos on social media by Getty Images showed the Chateau Boswell Winery, about three miles north of St. Helena, engulfed in flames.

Around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, two other fires were reported west of St. Helena; the Shady and Boysen fires have since merged.

Spring Mountain Road, which leads out of St. Helena toward Santa Rosa, was ordered evacuated, as were areas west of Highway 29 from Deer Park Road to Elmhurst Avenue, a road just north of the downtown area. Other evacuations were issued around 9:40 p.m. for unincorporated areas near St. Helena, and for residents from 1650 South Whitehall Lane north to White Sulpher Springs Road and west to the county line, with an evacuation warning for city residents not already under an order.

The Glass Fire, on the east side of the vineyard-lined Silverado Trail between St. Helena and Calistoga, started before 4 a.m. It was pushed by shifting winds, with gusts up to 70 mph Sunday morning on Mount St. Helena. Air quality near the blaze deteriorated, and smoke spread across Sonoma County. The fire started about 8 miles west of the Hennessey Fire, which became the LNU Lightning Complex Fire that reached Vacaville.

Evacuations began at 7:30 a.m. for 55 patients at Adventist Health St. Helena in Deer Park. The hospital’s second evacuation this fire season went smoothly, hospital spokeswoman Linda Williams said. The most acute patients were airlifted by helicopter and the others taken by ambulance to Napa and Vallejo.

Other evacuations in the area began before 5 a.m. as the fire quickly grew. By Sunday night, the orders for the Glass Fire extended from Howell Mountain Road in the south past Pickett Road on the north, and evacuation warnings were in place south of Howell Mountain Road.

St. Helena residents were asked to conserve water, as the fire was near a reservoir and treatment plant.

Tracy Sherman walked out her front door in St. Helena around 5 a.m. and smelled smoke.

“I thought, ‘This can’t be happening again,’” she said, but by the time she arrived to work at Sunshine Foods, she saw that it had. The parking lot was filling up three hours before opening with evacuees from Deer Park three miles away. Sherman and colleagues brought complimentary coffee and breakfast to evacuees who were trying to figure out where to go.

“Yesterday the skies were beautiful, and today people woke up to being evacuated again,” she said. “There was sadness and shock. But we came together as a community.”

This time of year, the air in Napa County can be saturated with the smell of wine as wineries prepare for harvest and host tourists.

“But, lately, it’s been smoke or nothing,” said Amy Bourdeau as she watched a column of fire sprout over the top of a hill along Silverado Trail.

Bourdeau woke up Sunday to fire alerts and Facebook messages from friends concerned about the fire burning near her home in Calistoga. She still hadn’t unpacked the grab bag she used when evacuating from the LNU Lightning Complex. Fires have forced her from her home every year since 2017.

“It’s a bit traumatizing,” she said. “I feel like I’m constantly fight-or-flight.”

The fire comes as a dry heat wave brings high temperatures to the Bay Area through Monday. A red flag warning, signaling high fire danger, is in effect for the region until 9 p.m. Monday. A Spare the Air Alert was extended through Monday.

“Predicted critical fire weather conditions have come to fruition today,” Swain said on Twitter. He cited new fires, including the Glass Fire and the “fast-spreading Zogg Fire” in Shasta County, and also said that existing fires, including the August Complex and North Complex, “have exploded once again.” Also, the Creek Fire in Fresno and Madera counties grew 10,000 acres on Saturday night.

The smoke, combined with high inland temperatures and vehicle exhaust, is expected to cause unhealthy smog build-up, particularly in the South Bay and East Bay, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

Natasha and Matt Clare were staying at the Calistoga Ranch on Lommel Road with their two young children Sunday when they heard a branch fall loudly onto the roof at about 4 a.m. Then they heard the winds, and saw — and smelled — the smoke coming over the hill.

The couple decided to drive home to Menlo Park. By the time they left with their 2-year-old and 6-month-old children at about 5 a.m., the area was under mandatory evacuation, said Natasha Clare.

“For us, the overwhelming feeling was gratefulness for the first responders, gratefulness that we had a place to go where we felt safe, but a lot of sadness that this is becoming the norm for us in this community,” she said.

Having evacuated their home near Deer Park a month ago because of the LNU Complex, Gay and Patrick McGreal knew what to do when they were jolted awake by sirens about 3 a.m. Sunday. They gathered essentials and their cat, Noodles McGuire, and drove to an evacuation center in Napa.

Their peacock, Blue, could not join.

“We threw a lot of food out there for him, so hopefully he survives,” Gay McGreal said.

This year’s extreme fire season won’t dissuade the McGreals from staying in Napa County.

“It’s our home,” Gay McGreal said. “It’s too bad it’s burning up. But I’m a native Californian, so I’m not leaving my state.”

Chronicle staff writers Matthias Gafni, Kate Galbraith and Kellie Hwang contributed to this report.

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