Kincade Fire in Sonoma County: Residents Flee as 10,000 Acres Burn

A wildfire driven by strong winds has torn through 10,000 acres in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, prompting the county sheriff’s office to issue evacuation orders for hundreds of residents.

The blaze, called the Kincade Fire, started in a mountainous area at about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday and was uncontained, a Cal Fire spokeswoman said early Thursday. The cause is under investigation. As of Thursday morning, at least two structures had been damaged by the fire, but there were no reports of injuries. Videos from residents and local reporters showed flames climbing up the sides of houses and sending smoke into roads.

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office ordered a mandatory evacuation for all of Geyserville, a small town of about 1,000 people surrounded by vineyards in the northern part of the county. The River Rock Casino, a 24-hour gambling facility in Geyserville, said all of its guests and employees had evacuated. In evacuation areas, sheriff’s deputies were using sirens and knocking on doors, telling residents to leave their homes, Sgt. Juan Valencia said.

Residents of Healdsburg, a city of 12,000 five miles south of Geyserville, were under an evacuation warning and had begun to trickle in to a community center that had been converted into an evacuation facility, said Rhea Borja, a spokeswoman for the city.

“It all depends on the fire’s trajectory, but we are prepped for a lot more people,” Ms. Borja said, adding that the evacuation center had room for horses and other livestock in its parking lot.

The Sonoma Valley is part of California’s Wine Country, and the fire was threatening wineries as it jumped a highway and continued moving west on Thursday morning. Employees at the deLorimier Winery in Geyserville were hopeful that it would escape damage, as it did in 2017, when the area was under a mandatory evacuation for several days because of wildfires.

“We’re feeling hopeful that it’s blowing the other direction,” said Katie Ambrosi, the marketing director for Wilson Artisan Wineries, which owns deLorimier. Most of the winery’s grapes have already been harvested, she said.

Some vineyard owners are anxious about the long-lasting effects that wildfires could have on their businesses even if they escape damage. Ms. Ambrosi said that since the 2017 fires, fewer tourists have been visiting deLorimier. “It’s hard for people who are not in the area to understand that the whole place isn’t on fire,” she said.

Late on Thursday morning, Joe Stewart, a fire captain for the Geyserville Fire Protection District, said Geyserville had not sustained any damage and that more firefighters had arrived to keep the blaze away from the town. He hoped prospective tourists would not stay away.

“It’ll be a little brown on the hillsides, and everything will be back to normal in Wine Country.”

Still, more than 300 firefighters from about half a dozen agencies were working to stop the blaze from spreading further. It was a relief to Geyserville firefighters when more help arrived from out of town as the local crews were scrambling to put out spot fires, likely ignited by windblown embers.

“We still have a long battle ahead of us,” Captain Stewart said. “It’s what they say is the new norm in California, and really the whole West, with catastrophic wildfires.”

Minerva Velasco, a manager at the Singletree Cafe in Healdsburg, said customers did not seem troubled by the nearby fire, even as a burning smell filled the air outside.

“It’s not too bad, but I think later it’s coming, because it’s still windy,” Ms. Velasco said.

The high temperatures and strong winds prompted preventive power outages this week in parts of Northern California, including a shut-off to about 28,000 customers in Sonoma County beginning at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, according to the utility Pacific Gas & Electric.

This round of shut-offs comes not long after the company got an earful from state regulators and criticism from the governor over its sweeping pre-emptive blackouts earlier this month. In total, about 179,000 customers in 17 counties were without power on Thursday as part of the planned shut-off, the company said.

In Southern California, another fire was raging in San Bernardino County on Thursday morning, burning over 75 acres and forcing the residents of about 80 homes to flee. Some homes in the city of San Bernardino were under a voluntary evacuation order. The vegetation fire, called the Old Water Fire, has a “potential for large growth” and is being fueled by Santa Ana winds blowing up to 50 miles per hour, the San Bernardino National Forest said.

The Saddleridge Fire, which forced evacuations of more than 100,000 people earlier this month just as their power came back on, was still burning in Los Angeles County on Thursday, but was 97 percent contained.

Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.