California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Director Ken Pimlott cautioned that the number of burned structures, estimated to be about 1,500, was very conservative and said firefighters were too busy trying to save lives to battle the blazes. Combined, the fires had scorched parts of eight different counties, including Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Yuba.
According to the Mercury News, one person died in Mendocino County and the California Highway Patrol (CHP) confirmed to KGO-TV that a second person, a blind elderly woman was found dead in her driveway in Santa Rosa.
A local NBC affiliate in the Bay Area is reporting they interviewed a man who said his elderly parents, ages 98 and 100, did not escape from their Silverado Resort home in Napa, but this has not been confirmed. Actually, Pimlott said he didn’t have an estimate on the number of people hurt and missing.
The resulting inferno from all the fires caused a black pall of thick smoke to blacken the skies this morning as far south as Santa Cruz, leaving an acrid stench in the air and burning the eyes and making it difficult to breathe. The winds, at times, ferocious, fanned red-hot embers into the air, setting off new bursts of flame as they took hold on the dry brush.
“It was an inferno like you’ve never seen before,” said Marian Williams, who fled through the flames before dawn in a caravan with neighbors as one of the wildfires reached the vineyards and ridges at her small Sonoma County town of Kenwood. “Trees,” she said, “were on fire like torches.”
The cause of the fires is still under investigation as firefighters work to save lives and evacuate people still in the line of the blazes. Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency in Napa, Sonoma and Yuba counties, authorizing the state’s National Guard to mobilize.
