Teams report first progress against wine country wildfires

By Paul Elias and Jocelyn Gecker / Associated Press

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — A fifth day of desperate firefighting in California wine country brought a glimmer of hope Friday as crews battling the flames reported their first progress toward containing the massive blazes, and hundreds more firefighters poured in to join the effort.

Seventeen large fires were still burning across Northern California, with more than 9,000 firefighters attacking the flames.

“The emergency is not over, and we continue to work at it, but we are seeing some great progress,” said the state’s emergency operations director, Mark Ghilarducci.

Over the past 24 hours, crews arrived from Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North and South Carolina, Oregon and Arizona. Other teams came from as far away as Canada and Australia.

Since igniting Sunday in spots across eight counties, the blazes have killed 32 people, destroyed at least 3,500 homes and businesses and reduced entire neighborhoods to ash and rubble.

With hundreds still reported missing, the death toll was expected to keep rising. Individual fires including a 1991 blaze in the hills around Oakland killed more people than any one of the current blazes, but no collection of simultaneous fires in California ever led to so many deaths, authorities said.

Dozens of search-and-rescue personnel at a mobile home park in Santa Rosa carried out the grim task Friday of searching for remains. Fire tore through Santa Rosa early Monday, leaving only a brief window for residents to flee, and decimated the park, which was known as Journey’s End and was home to hundreds of people.

Workers were looking for two missing people who lived at the park. They found one set of remains, mostly bone fragments, and continued looking for the other, said Sonoma County Sgt. Spencer Crum.

To help in the search, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office near San Francisco sent specialized equipment, including drones with three-dimensional cameras and five dogs trained to sniff out human remains.

Authorities have said that some victims were so badly burned they were identified only by metal surgical implants found in the ashes that have ID numbers on them.

The influx of outside help offered critical relief to firefighters who have been working with little rest since the blazes started.

“It’s like pulling teeth to get firefighters and law enforcement to disengage from what they are doing out there,” CalFire’s Napa chief Barry Biermann said. “They are truly passionate about what they are doing to help the public, but resources are coming in. That’s why you are seeing the progress we’re making.”

In addition to manpower, equipment deliveries have poured in. Crews were using 840 fire engines from across California and another 170 sent from around the country.

Before dawn, four firetrucks rolled out of Eastside Fire and Rescue in Issaquah, Washington, part of three King County strike teams. The 50 firefighters in 16 vehicles rolled south for an 18-day deployment.

“These guys are trained in wildland fires, and this is what they love to do,” Eastside Fire Chief Jeff Clark said.

Although they pitch in elsewhere in Washington and Oregon, Eastside has not sent crews to California since 2007.

Two of the largest fires in Napa and Sonoma counties were at least 25 percent contained by Friday, which marked “significant progress,” said Ken Pimlott, chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. But he cautioned that crews would face more gusty winds, low humidity and higher temperatures. Those conditions were expected to take hold later Friday and persist into the weekend.

As the fires raged, many people were still searching for lost loved ones and picking through the ashes of their homes, both mentally and physically exhausted by the trauma of the past week.

“It wears you out,” said winemaker Kristin Belair, who was driving back from Lake Tahoe to her as-yet-undamaged home in Napa. “Anybody who’s been in a natural disaster can tell you that it goes on and on. I think you just kind of do hour by hour almost.”

Smoke from the blazes hung thick over the grape-growing region and drifted south to the San Francisco Bay Area. Face masks were becoming a regular accessory, and sunsets turned blood-red from the haze.

“It’s acrid now,” said Wayne Petersen in Sonoma. “I’m wearing the mask because I’ve been here two or three days now. I live here. It’s starting to really affect my breathing and lungs.”

Some members of the Oakland Raiders were wearing masks during workouts Thursday. The NFL has been exploring options to move Sunday’s game between the Raiders and Los Angeles Chargers if air quality makes it necessary.

Fire officials were investigating whether downed power lines or other utility failures could have sparked the fires, but they say they are far from determining how the blazes began.

Gecker reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez and Daisy Nguyen in San Francisco and Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz also contributed to this report.