Travis AFB evacuated as LNU Lightning wildfires top 124,000 acres, destroy homes in Vacaville
A major wildfire roared through Solano County Wednesday, jumping Interstate 80 in the late afternoon just north of Fairfield, forcing highway officials to close a five-mile freeway for several hours between Fairfield and Vacaville and prompting a partial evacuation of Travis Air Force Base.
THURSDAY’S UPDATES: MILD WEATHER PUTS CAL FIRE IN ‘A LOT BETTER PLACE’
The afternoon drama came at the end of a long and destructive day in the North Bay, where a two-day-old fire prompted evacuation of several thousand residents in multiple neighborhoods in Fairfield and Vacaville, and burned dozens of homes in the hills outside those cities, forcing some rural residents to flee in the early-morning dark as flames blew onto their homesteads.
The lightning-caused fire, which ignited Monday morning near Hennessey Ridge Road in Napa County, is part of a series of blazes that had burned 175 structures and scorched 124,000 acres as of Wednesday evening.
The fire continued to burn out of control in the late afternoon, threatening 125,000 structures. Evacuations were ongoing Wednesday throughout the day under a blanket of red clouds and amid falling flakes of ashes.
The fire had not penetrated Fairfield proper as of evening, but had forced a mandatory partial evacuation at Travis Air Force Base and was threatening the Paradise Valley neighborhood, forcing some evacuations including an elder care facility.
In an alert issued just after 7 p.m., the Travis base commander ordered evacuations of “non-mission essential personnel.”
Early in the day it had dipped into a corner of Vacaville in the Browns Valley area, but had not damaged any homes inside the city, officials there said.
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Solano, told The Sacramento Bee late Wednesday afternoon that firefighters are over-matched at the moment, and are focusing on protecting lives and property while hoping for cooler weather soon to help contain the fire.
“We have a very dangerous situation, extreme temperatures, high winds, and a lot of fuel,” Garamendi said. “It’s a huge blaze. There isn’t enough equipment to contain it. It’s a matter now of saving lives and property until weather changes.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier in the day said he has called on Texas, Arizona and Nevada to provide mutual aid fire crews.
Fire officials, who said at a press conference they are working with depleted resources, acknowledged the series of fires got out of control early Wednesday. Firefighting conditions remained rough heading into the evening, a CalFire official said.
“With the hot, dry conditions, and the difficult terrain, we can’t put crews in some areas,” spokesman Will Powers said.
Evacuation warning in five North Bay counties
Emergency officers issued a special plea Wednesday to people living near fire areas in Solano, Yolo, Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.
The main Vacaville-area evacuations occurred early Wednesday, some of it before daybreak, when the Hennessey Fire headed east overnight from its origination in the hills between Napa and Solano, burning through cattle ranches in the hills around Pleasants Valley Road.
Those evacuations were followed by an even larger order for more than 10,000 residents to leave a swath of Sonoma County, including along the Russian River in the Guerneville and Rio Nido areas. A separate fire, the Walbridge Fire, was burning in that area. Other evacuations are taking place west of Healdsburg in the northern reaches of Sonoma’s wine country.
The Adventist St. Helena Hospital and the nearby community of Angwin in the mountains east of Napa Valley both were ordered evacuated Wednesday evening.
Evacuations were ordered just before 3 p.m. in Fairfield for residents in the Rancho Solano, Sanctuary and Rolling Hills neighborhoods. “Rancho Solano and Sanctuary neighborhoods, there is an immediate threat to life. This is a lawful order to leave now. The area is lawfully closed to public access,” the Fairfield Police Department said.
Minutes later, winds pushed it down a slope just outside the north end of Fairfield, and briefly jumped the eight-lane I-80, forcing traffic to a halt.
Lightning strikes during freak storms earlier this week caused an estimated 60 fires in all in the five counties, officials said, although only a handful of them were considered significant. In total, the cluster, called the LNU Lightning Complex, had burned 72 square miles by Wednesday morning.
Cal Fire officials reported four civilian injuries as of early Wednesday, but provided no details.
The fire came so fast in the Pleasants Valley Road area that several families barely escaped, and one was trapped for hours in a field before they could find an opening to get out.
Alex Vlasache, who lives on a ranch a few miles west of Vacaville, said “a great gust of wind” blew the fire onto their property at about 1 a.m. He, his wife and two children didn’t have time to open the pen for their cattle. As they drove off, fire whipped over the top of their camper like “a tunnel of inferno.”
“I thought we weren’t going to make it, but I saw a dirt field and we hoofed it over there,” he said. They waited there until flames abated, then fled again. They spent Wednesday morning in their camper in a furniture store parking lot awaiting word on where they should go next.
Rushing out of flames’ way
At 1:30 a.m., ash and embers were falling around on his 11-acre property off of Pleasants Valley Road as Tim Clement frantically hooked up his family’s travel trailer. Clement said he had about 10 minutes for his wife, Michelle, and their two kids, Jason, 12, and Victoria, 10, to flee, as sheriff’s deputies drove around the neighborhood telling people to leave over a loudspeaker.
They left with just a handful of clothes out of their dirty clothes pile, their two dogs, their rabbit and their two cats.
“They’re not allowing us to go back, but just hearsay from two different neighbors that went back, they said the little area that we live in there was around 20 houses. Only one was standing. And it wasn’t mine,” he said. “Pretty devastating.”
Vacaville high school teacher Ryan Price said his neighborhood was smokey when he went to bed Tuesday night, but the fire seemed far enough away from his home. He was awakened at 3 a.m. by someone pounding on his front door. It was his brother in law.
“He looked panicky, and he said, ‘Hey, they’re evacuating everybody. You gotta get out of here,’ ” Price said. He, his wife, Kristin, their three children, Johnny, 12, Marcella, 15, Sophia, 11, left with their two dogs and their cat and drove to a relative’s house across town.
When they got there, Sophia started crying because she forgot her goldfish, Sally. Price said he drove back into the evacuation zone and grabbed it for her. “The fish is OK, man,” he said.
Neighborhoods north of Fruitvale Road, between Browns Valley and Gibson Canyon roads, were evacuated, police say. Also being evacuated are North Alamo, North Orchard and Cheyenne Estates.
Vacaville Fire Chief Kris Concepcion said the flames burned “just barely” into the city in the Browns Valley area early Wednesday, but firefighters and homeowners preparation saved houses.
“It didn’t burn or damage any homes,” Concepcion said. He said a combination of firefighters working hard overnight, the city’s weed abatement program and homeowners’ work to create defensible space well in advance of this fire kept the flames from spreading further into the city.
He said there have been no injuries reported in Vacaville, but about 4,000 to 4,500 homes in the Vacaville area have been evacuated.
The fire has burned as well in the hills southwest of Winters, but Winters Mayor Mayor Wade Cowan said there are no evacuations there. Firefighters last night set backfires west of that city to protect it.
“The wind has quit. There is no threat to Winters, just a lot of smoke and (a) lot of ash,” Cowan said.
Some homes in the hills were left standing, others were not so lucky. As the fire subsided on Gibson Canyon Road, telephone polls and trees were decimated, but the fire left houses standing, surrounded by scorched grass and mangled, melted plastic fences. On Serenity Hills Road, though, other structures were burnt to the ground, leaving a blackened car with melted tires and what remained of a tin roof smoldering in the ashes.
Clusters of refugees
Despite several years of extreme fires in California, many of which have destroyed sections of cities, including a major 2017 blaze in nearby Santa Rosa, some residents say they were still initially unwilling to leave home.
Jessica Flanagan, who lives with her family west of Vacaville, wasn’t going to leave Wednesday morning, but her daughter got scared, so they gathered up clothes, school work, tax information and family photos – and felt lucky to leave when they did.
“It was absolutely insane,” she said. “The noise was something I’d never heard before. Trees were popping. You could hear the transformers exploding too.”
The fires created clusters of refugees throughout the area, awaiting word on whether homes survived. Evacuation centers have been established at Ulatis Community Center, the McBride Senior Center, Padan Elementary School, Fairmont Elementary School and the Sierra Vista K-8 campus, Solano County emergency officials said.
But many people instead gathered in RVs and campers in store parking lots and city parks, waiting and hoping to be allowed home. Near Cantalow Road, which was part of the morning fire zone, residents lined up at barricades awaiting word.
Some were lucky, though, and have been allowed back home after initial evacuations.
As ash filled Gary, Stephanie and Ty Reese‘s swimming pool Tuesday night, the family left for their other son’s house eight blocks downhill by Linwood Street and West Monte Vista Avenue. They stayed there Wednesday morning with a trailer full of pictures, passports, jewelry, clothing and other valuables from the place they’ve lived for the last 30 years.
Flames licked the hill across from the Reeses’ house on Monte Verde Drive, and a neighbor put out embers that drifted into his backyard, Stephanie said. But shifting winds took the threat away, and neighbors had begun moving back in.
“When I drove by last night, the flames were just starting to go over the hill. But I guess it changed direction with the wind, so thankfully for us it didn’t come all the way back down,” Ty said.
For many, by afternoon, it had turned into a matter of watch, wait and ruminate on a difficult year in California.
Beth McFall, 60, was told to evacuate in Vacaville around 10 this morning. She’s been in the parking lot of Will C. Wood High School, keeping the air conditioner on in her families’ cars for her animals: 3 cats and a chinchilla. She doesn’t know what the rest of the day holds, but hopes she’ll be able to return home.
”There are no hotels between here and Sacramento,” she said. “So I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
As for the combination of COVID-19 and the evacuation: “2020’s been a great year,” she laughed. “Its been one thing after another.”
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 7:14 AM with the headline "Travis AFB evacuated as LNU Lightning wildfires top 124,000 acres, destroy homes in Vacaville."
