Fire Dispatch #1: Pack the Cat and Don’t Look Back. I’m Fleeing California’s Firestorm Right Now.

Paul Kitagaki Jr. /The Sacramento Bee via AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

While Kevin’s on vacation, we’ve invited other Mother Jones writers to contribute posts.

I’m waiting about 10 miles from the nearest fire front with bags packed, my cat carrier ready, and my cat locked inside with me.

My property is strewn with ash and chunks of stuff that’s been snowing down, off and on, for the last two days. The sky is a sickly orange color and the air is thick with noxious smoke a lot nastier than wood fire. I’ve packed up trash bags full of extra blankets and pillows to take to the nearest evacuation center, where I’ve heard that people are sleeping on the floors by night and are bored stiff by day. I wish I could play a musical instrument well enough to entertain them for a spell.

View from my window, Sebastopol, Sonoma County

Julia Whitty

Right now it’s afternoon in Sonoma County. That means the winds are picking up and the wildfires with them. I’m listening in on the Northern California Major Incident (Disaster Event) scanner traffic, which is getting increasingly chaotic.

Old fires are kicking up. New fires are sprouting. Requests for air support—drops of water or fire retardant from fixed wing or helicopter—are multiplying. More wind means more energy for the fires and with that comes more smoke. Air crews are beginning to report visibility to poor to navigate. Some airstrips are closing. There are increasingly plaintive requests from crews on the ground asking for air support as fires crest ridges and threaten to erase their backbreaking work of the past 24-plus hours—or worse.

Cal Fire is chasing seven major fires in Sonoma, Napa, Lake, and Mendocino Counties, totaling 83,000 acres—and growing. A report of a brand new fire is coming in from Lake County and another from Napa County just south of Calistoga. There are reports of new vegetation fires in Kenwood and Santa Rosa threatening structures. The Santa Rosa Police Department has announced that the Nunns Fire is rapidly approaching Oakmont—a retirement community for seniors—in Santa Rosa. It remains under mandatory evacuation. The 25,000-acre Atlas Fire in Napa has jumped Atlas Peak Road—an important line firefighters were hoping to hold.  As of this morning, there was still no containment on any of the fires. Crews are simply scrambling to save lives and structures.

Tomorrow’s weather bodes ill. Northerly winds are forecast to reach 30 mph or more over the North Bay ridges from 5pm Wednesday through 5pm Thursday. This is the kind of weather that drove the Tubbs Fire twelve miles across the rugged terrain between Calistoga, in Napa Valley, and Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, at lightning speed in the early hours of Monday morning. Nobody wants to know how these fires are going to act in the next few days.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate