Doing OK here in Napa. Fires all around, ash falling like snow, fires on both sides of the valley. Helicopters over my house all night with emergency equipment racing back and forth. Lost power about midnight and didn't get it back until about 6. Cell service is junk, towers toasted. Some homes lost and some wineries including portions of the property where my wife works. Buildings gone and vines too. Going to be an interesting time, hope the wind stays mellow as it was roaring last night. None of the fires have any control as of this morning.

Stay safe Brent that's some nasty shit going on in Northern California people are dying

Been following it close.

I wish everyone the best. Shout out to all the Firefighters.

Be Safe.

10 dead and 100 missing currently. Fires on both sides of valley mean smoke and ash is unreal. Smoke so heavy 3 guys in the office are wearing paint respirators!
I know I have some friends that lost homes but its still all in flux. Winery my wife works at took a big hit, lost buildings, vines and wine too. A handful of wineries burnt to the ground. Real shit storm basically.
CalFire and has been doing a great job considering terrain and scope of the fires. We have many roads that lead off up in to the hills with houses along them that are one way in and out. CHP did lots of rescues via helo as people had no way out.
Good news is wind has died, bad for smoke but good for fire suppression and cooler temps too.

For right now there's a small 150 acre fire off Hwy 26 in West Point, not all that far from my place.

Hopefully the winds will stay down for all the firefighters working all these fires and for homes, people and businesses in the way.

Nor Cal had record rainfall last winter which meant lot's of growth over the summer. Now all that growth being down in water content = very high fire danger.

The tubbs fire went from Calistoga to Santa Rosa in only about one hour. It takes roughly 30 minutes to drive that by car. The first responders could do nothing but watch as it

leap frogged with the wind.

wind sunday night was gusting to 70mph. fire could outrace pretty much anything.

takehikes wrote:
wind sunday night was gusting to 70mph. fire could outrace pretty much anything.

My heart and prayers go out to all of you.

I used to be a firefighter in Shasta County near Redding, CA. In looking at the map I can see that California has to be massively stretched in trying to man these events. I may have to email Cal Fire to see if I can pick up an assignment despite my no longer being with a unit.

I watched the live video as these things blew out in the wind the other night. Absolutely horrific because I know how indefensible that can be and how people are absolutely caught without any type of warning as they awake to seeing their property or home on fire. Escape routes are another thing.

Getting news coverage from even here in Las Vegas, only minutes from California, is hard to come across. I'm thinking the nation is in 'disaster overload' mode right now so news outlets choose to focus on politics.

Entire modern neighborhoods have been torched so that speaks to the intensity of the flames and winds. That should just never be happening to stucco homes with tile roofs.

Here's a map showing the current conditions with California fires. The acreage of some of those fires is unbelievable, especially considering the very short time it took for them to grow to the size they are.

http://calfire.ca.gov/communications/communications_StatewideFireSummary

To give you guys an idea of how bad this can be......the fire in Santa Rosa started in Calistoga.
It is a 30 minute drive to get from one to the other through the hills.
The fire went the same distance in an hour!
It swept down and pushed embers a mile or more ahead of it with the wind we had.
There is no stopping it, there is barely the ability to run from it.

Wind got calm yesterday and it helped some but supposed to be back up gusting to 50 tonight. We shall see.

Hang in there, I'm sure we are all wishing you the best.

Living 130 miles from the Napa area fires I'm in the sierra foothills. I walked outside this morning and thought we had another fire in the area. The memories still fresh of the huge Butte fire we had not long ago that got within a mile of our house. I had to check the fire map to know it wasn’t another fire here.

Now at work in El dorado hills (still 100 miles from the fires) and we have a haze of smoke inside the closed door shop that has been coming in through the evap cooler ducts through the night. Normally it only looks like this when the machines are rough cutting material heavily. Air quality is terrible. Not to complain when there are guys breathing through flames trying to put out 17 very active California fires.

Lots of property loss and lives being lost in the Santa Rosa area and the fires are only 1-2% containment. Keep praying.