700 plus people still under evac order
CalFire Incident Commander Chief Sean Kavanaugh shared new damage assessment numbers from the Walbridge Fire and according to Kavanaugh, 252 properties in Sonoma County were destroyed, 19 were damaged and 468 properties within the fire perimeter have no damage and were saved by fire crews. As property assessment continues, so does work on mopping up the remaining areas of the fire, but CalFire officials said crews are making good progress.
Kavanaugh said during a 4 p.m. press briefing that damage assessment is still ongoing and CalFire will continue to update their numbers as soon as new data comes in.
Tennis Wick, a chief operator with Sonoma County’s emergency operations center, said 406 people have registered with FEMA for individual assistance. Of that total, 61 people registered at the Guerneville local assistance center, 29 have registered at the Healdsburg local assistance center and 316 have registered online.
In terms of progress on the Walbridge Fire, the fire is now 54,940 acres and is 64% contained. The Meyers Fire is 99% contained at 2,360 acres. Kavanaugh said there is now only one engine assigned to the Meyers incident for patrol purposes.
Resources for the Walbridge Fire includes 117 assigned engines, 25 water tenders, 14 crews and 29 dozer crews.
“We are making good progress. We do have an area out there to the west that is a challenging area to try and tie in lines… So that is going to be a long process to deal with that,” Kavanaugh said.
CalFire Chief Ben Nicholls said overall, progress on the fire is looking good.
“The bulk of the fire area is looking really good. There is no noticeable smoke coming from the north end of the fire. Down the east side there is a little bit of work left to be done out at the base of Red Slide and the fire is still consuming some material down below Mount Jackson but within our containment lines and crews are actively working on mop up over there,” Nicholls said.
Sonoma County Sheriff Sgt. Juan Valencia noted that they do not expect any additional evacuation orders to be lifted today. Currently 700 plus people are still under an evacuation order.
As people do start to return to their homes, Kavanaugh offered a word of caution in regards to hazardous trees in burn zones.
“As we start with repopulation and lifting evacuation orders and warnings, we’ve run into hazard trees. We do have weakened trees that are starting to come down in the area. We have multiple falling teams that we’ve brought in to try and take care of some of those trees, but I ask the public, when you move back into your property and you come in, please do a safety check of your property. If you find hazard trees please flag them and make them known. Those trees do get weak and can come down,” Kavanugh said.
District 5 Supervisor Lynda Hopkins said while some residents are still evacuated she’s grateful for the work crews have done to get some communities home safe and.
“I am in a place of gratitude today, which is a strange thing to say when we still have 700 plus folks who are under mandatory evacuation and that we have over one hundred homes that were lost in Sonoma County, yet I am so grateful, so grateful because it could have been worse,” Hopkins said. “Grateful because the communities of Hacienda and Rio Nido and even some areas of Sweetwater Springs were able to return home for the first time after nearly 12 days of being evacuated and I am incredibly grateful for the heroic actions and decisions of Chief Shana Jones, Chief Sean Kavanaugh and Chief Ben Nicholls, as well as some of the other leaders we have here locally … and also our amazing local fire chiefs.”
Hopkins also expressed her thanks for all of the other folks, volunteer firefighters, dozer teams, utility teams and people who donated food to fire crews, for helping during the fire.
“I remember in 2017 of being so proud of how West County stood up, because we weren’t on fire we opened our doors to evacuees, we fed them, we wanted to take care of everyone else in the county and I just want to say ‘thank you’ to everyone else in the county that was not on fire this time that did the exact same thing that we did in 2017. You opened your doors in the midst of a pandemic to your neighbors in west county,” Hopkins said.
