Smoke from the Solano and Napa County fires fills the Valley over the past week. Photo by Ryan Lely.
Sonoma’s skies were white this week with smoke and ash from hundreds of last Friday’s lightning-sparked Northern California wildfires, and local firefighters helped their Napa Valley colleagues contain a blaze which had consumed 4,089 acres as of Tuesday morning.
An engine apiece was dispatched Saturday afternoon from the Schell-Vista Fire Department and Sonoma Valley Fire and Rescue Authority to the so-called Wild Fire between Napa and Fairfield, a Schell-Vista spokesman said Monday morning. No cause had yet been determined, but a force numbering at its height 438 firefighters, four air tankers and 63 engines had the fire more than 80 percent contained by press time. Although 300 homes were threatened at one point, one barn was reported destroyed.
“It’s gearing up to be quite the season,” SVFRA Capt. Bob Norrbom said Monday afternoon. He said the agency’s Office of Emergency Services engine, which so far this year has answered calls in Santa Cruz and Chico, has been attacking the Rim Fire near Oroville since 1 a.m. Sunday, and added that SVFRA Capt. Spencer Andreis is “on the line” training as a five-engine strike-team leader at the Carson Fire near Garberville.
Inside the Valley, firefighters had a relatively quiet weekend, with less than two acres total burning Saturday afternoon on Napa Road and East Napa Street. But county fire dispatchers fielded numerous “smoke investigation” calls from worried residents who thought the flames were in their immediate neighborhood.
“We had a bunch of those,” Kenwood fire Capt. Daren Bellach said Monday. He said the department was called for two strike teams but had to turn one down due to staffing obligations at Infineon Raceway.
“We had so much committed to NASCAR, we couldn’t go up to Humboldt County,” Bellach said, adding that Kenwood had earlier sent an engine to a fire near Chico.
The National Weather Service was predicting temperatures this week in the high 80s and low 90s, with smoky skies at least until tomorrow.
