Did Luther Burbank Center for the Arts Burned Down?
SANTA ROSA —The inferno swept up over a wooded ridge, like many California wildfires do, but this ane was unlike.
The burn down skipped across Highway 101, obliterating the heart of neighborhoods also.
"These fires happen in the hills, in the rural area, not a neighborhood," said David Kay, 54, clearly stunned equally he returned to his home in the Coffey Park neighborhood Monday morning and establish nothing but rubble for blocks and blocks. "You call back you're safety in a neighborhood."
In 1 of the most surreal scenes, broadcast on KGO Boob tube, a squad of Kaiser Permanente nurses and doctors, faces covered by respirators, gently raced critical patients in hospital beds down the street, with brilliant orange flames in the background. About 130 patients were safely evacuated in 3 hours, including women in labor and a "very sick" child. Some infirmary employees drove patients in their own cars.
When the evacuation started at 3 a.m., the patients "were stunned. They didn't accept fourth dimension to process a thing," said Judi Goodin, the hospital'due south safety operations leader.
If patients could exit of bed on their own, they did, she said. "If non, we grabbed people from their beds and put them in wheelchairs."
The fire came perilously close to Kaiser Santa Rosa medical center and its huge liquid oxygen and diesel tanks. Firefighters weren't sure they could stave off the bonfire that was engulfing the adjacent mobile home park called "Journey's Stop," she said.
"Nosotros realized early on that this fire, information technology was going to come into Santa Rosa," Santa Rosa Fire Master Tony Gossner said Monday dark, describing how the department chosen in every firefighter, every resource equally the Tubbs fire roared into boondocks.
His crews initially ready in the Kmart parking lot, "but information technology didn't take long before nosotros realized this was non a good spot." The big box store was i of dozens that burned down.
Investigators are only beginning to figure out what started this and the dozen other fires sparked late Sunday, but when the winds whipped up so did the Sonoma County emergency dispatch center with reports of down power lines and blown transformers. At to the lowest degree x people take died in the fires — seven in Sonoma County — but authorities warned that number could climb with up to 100 people reported missing.
Local police enforcement and fire officials on Monday urged people to stay away from the evacuation areas and off the roads. But with so many emergency crews fighting fires, in that location were few to keep people from walking past the road blocks.
Equally residents returned Mon afternoon for a glimpse of what was left, the scenes around the urban center were apocalyptic: former people on canes and walkers shuffling along sidewalks through the orange glow; families dragging luggage and wearing blue surgical masks through the thick smoke.
"Nosotros're merely trying to encounter if it's still there," said Michele Mills, 70, pushing her walker along Coffey Lane, heading to her home a few blocks away.
In a daze, residents tried somehow to digest the growing toll: The Subconscious Valley Satellite Elementary School — burned down. Willi'south Wine Bar and Cricklewood Restaurant on Old Redwood Highway — destroyed. Classrooms and offices at Cardinal Newman Loftier School — burned to the ground. So was Fountaingrove'due south historic Round Barn, built in 1899.
The due east cease of the Luther Burbank Centre for the Arts was scorched, equally was part of the Keysight technology park, where a BMW and Audi in the parking lot were burned out, just similar and so many bizarre scenes from a current of air-fueled fire storm, a brilliant blood-red Porsche Targa two rows over was spared. Then was the Charles Schulz Museum on the westward side of Highway 101.
Residents of this urban center of 175,000 fled in the heart of the night, with nada but their pets — and many without them — and returned Monday to cypher only ruins.
In the rubble of the Coffey Park neighborhood, Patsy and Heinz Streckfuss found cipher but a brick fireplace.
"Oh God. That's our house," said Patsy, 76, equally she came upon the wreckage. The couple had merely replaced all of the wooden floors and built a gazebo out back. "The whole block is gone."
In fact, every block as far every bit she could see was gone.
And and then was her calico cat, Rosie, who had bolted into hiding the nighttime earlier.
"Rosie, Rosie!" she chosen out. "Rosie!"
The couple were awakened at about 1:thirty a.m. Monday when a gust of wind blew through the business firm and slammed a door closed inside. Heinz said that's when a neighbour pounded on the door.
"I opened the door in my skivvies," Heinz said.
"You better get your clothes on and leave of here," his neighbor said.
They could see flames at the end of the block. They quickly dressed and jumped in the car to bulldoze away — with zero but his telephone and her purse. They spent the night in a Raley'southward supermarket parking lot across town.
This burn down, which started in Calistoga, is being compared with the Valley Fire in 2015 in neighboring Lake County, which was considered ane of the hottest and fastest in memory.
"We had 20,000 acres in 12 hours," said Cal Fire Capt. Richard Cordova on Mon afternoon of the Tubbs burn down. "Information technology's pretty much unheard of."
Equally the sun set Monday night, severed natural gas lines flared throughout the urban center, fire trucks tore through the streets and the residents of Santa Rosa were only beginning to comprehend their loss.
"Now, what practice I do?" Heinz Streckfuss said. "Now, what exercise I practise?"
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Source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/09/santa-rosa-fire-how-a-sudden-firestorm-obliterated-a-city/
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