Updated 7:10 p.m.
Firefighters battling a Sonoma County blaze that grew to 23,700 acres late Friday are trying to take advantage of a break in the region's windy weather to extend their containment of the blaze before another siege of dangerously gusty weather begins Saturday night.
Cal Fire incident commander Mike Parkes said Thursday the agency is adding more crews in an attempt to contain the blaze, dubbed the Kincade Fire, ahead of windy weather predicted to begin Saturday night that could last into Monday.
"We are absolutely up against the clock," Parkes said. "The winds that are predicted are expected to be worse than what we had just the other night."
"This wind event is definitely one of the strongest that we've seen so far this season and likely the strongest since the North Bay fires in 2017," National Weather Service meteorologist Spencer Tangen said. The 2017 North Bay fires killed 44 and damaged or destroyed 21,000 homes.
The Kincade Fire began Wednesday in northeastern Sonoma County just after 9:30 p.m. and was fueled by wind gusts of up to 80 mph. The blaze, which has destroyed 49 structures and threatens another 600, is 5% contained, according to Cal Fire.
"Really, we’re just prioritizing cooling the perimeter and getting some containment lines in, because all of this fire is going to be tested by that wind this weekend, and what we’re trying to prevent is anything getting over the line," Cal Fire division chief Jonathan Cox said Friday.
More than 1,300 personnel are working the blaze. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said 321 inmates were fighting the Kincade Fire on Friday.
Evacuations were ordered late Wednesday in the sparsely populated area in the hills east of Cloverdale. Mandatory evacuation orders expanded before dawn Thursday to include the town of Geyserville, a community of about 900 centered at the junction of U.S. 101 and Highway 128 about 20 miles north of Santa Rosa.
The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office has issued mandatory evacuation orders for a total of about 2,000 people. The sheriff has issued an evacuation warning – an advisory that people should be ready to leave – for those living in the unincorporated area between the fire and the north side of Healdsburg.
There have been no reported injuries or missing persons.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Sonoma and Los Angeles counties Friday. The Tick Fire burning in Los Angeles County has forced the evacuation of up to 50,000 people.
PG&E began preemptively shutting off power to approximately 179,000 customers Wednesday in 17 counties in an effort to prevent its equipment from sparking wildfires amid dry and gusty conditions. While power has been restored to most customers, PG&E said this weekend's winds could lead to power cuts similar in extent to those imposed in early October — an event that affected an estimated 2 million people.
San Jose State University meteorology professor Alison Bridger said it’s not unusual to have a rapid sequence of dangerous fire weather events like those this month. And with PG&E and the state's other large utilities having adopted public safety power shutoffs as one of their principal tools to avoid sparking wildfires, that means customers are faced with a rapid sequence of blackouts, too.
"There’s no reason why you can’t lose power and then lose power again and then lose power again and then have to be evacuated," Bridger said. "It’s kind of a grim reality.”
PG&E reported Thursday that a failure on one of its high-voltage transmission lines occurred Wednesday night — minutes before the reported start of a fire.
PG&E confirmed Thursday evening that while the utility shut off power to its lower-voltage distribution lines in that area, it did not turn off the power to high-voltage transmission lines.
A Cal Fire investigation into last November's Camp Fire confirmed that a PG&E transmission line sparked the blaze that within hours became the deadliest and most destructive wildland conflagration in California history, killing 85 and destroying 14,000 homes.
KQED's Sonja Hutson, Michelle Wiley, Ted Goldberg and Peter Jon Shuler and contributed to this report.
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