Transcripts For KGO Good Morning America Weekend Edition 20240713

Middle school. If you are in danger, dont wait. Evacuate. All others please avoid these areas to allow First Responders access. Another fire burning in east concord county rig contra costa county. Severely fast winds and tinder dry conditions toward the summer lake park subdivision. Homes and Mobile Home Park is being threatened. More information on the vicinity of Bethel Island and cypress roads in oakley. Task forces have been dispatched and the contra costa Fire District is asking to avoid that. Sorry. Moving on to this video you can see well peo a in the dark and so theyve been trying to prepare and deal with that. This is video overnight of grocery stores, folks at whole foods trying to move all of those fringe rated items into freezer trucks outside since they dont have power inside. This morning nearly 389,000 pg e customers across the bay area have no electricity like this whole foods in lafayette who are using flashlights to get by like so many of us here. Yes. Also we have meteorologist lisa argen monitoring the winds. The gusts over 90s Miles Per Hour in some places. The healdsburg hills, thats way north about 4,000 feet where we had a 93 mile an hour peak gust, mount helena, 87 mile an hour, mt. Diablo 50 miles an hour, the gusty winds working down to the surface at 20 to 30 mile an hour range throughout date. A cold system to the east of us, tight pressure gratent. A look at our current winds in the hills. Knoxville creek, 4,000 feet, 61 mile an hour wind gusts. Mount tam 30 miles. The East Foothills, 34mileanhour wind gusts. Oakland hills nearly 30 miles. As we look at the surface winds, the gusts here, look at the north bay. That color 40 to 50 miles an hour, 20 to 30 miles an hour showing up now across all of the bay. Were still looking at our wind advisory throughout the bay area and our high wind warning in the upper elevations of the north bay where critical fire throughout the day today. Thank you. If youre just joining us lets get you caught up on our major story this morning. The kincade fire. Mass pg e power shutoff. Cal fire announced the kincade fire has spread to 25,455 acres. The fire is now 11 contained. We do expect that number as far as the acreage to grow once we get a new update from cal fire. By the way theyre holding a News Conference shortly so were standing by for that. Meantime we know 77 structures have been destroyed. That includes 31 homes and as we mentioned in the last half hour, there was some confusion initially as to whether parts of santa rosa are under a mandatory Evacuation Order. Now we know a mandatory Evacuation Order has been issued in the city limits west of highway 101 and north of highway 12. And pg e has turned off power across the bay area because of the high fire danger. More than 389,000 customers are in the dark this morning in eight bay area counties. All right. We want to look at the incident map. This is the Sonoma County incident map. It shows where the evacun ars are which is everything in purple right here. The red area is the kincade fire which is burning and now dealing with wind gusts of 80, 90 mile per hour winds. We spoke to david and he was telling us there are 20 to 50,000 people per evacuation zone and im looking at this, looks like there are 10 mandatory evacuation zones in Sonoma County. Were talking about hundreds of thousands of people here. One of the new bits of information in terms of evacuations overnight was santa rosa. Yesterday, of course, we know that healdsburg and windsor the entire towns and cities were evacuated but then that Evacuation Order spread south so were talking about parts of santa rosa that have evacuated like oakmont, coffey park, those types of areas Fountain Grove as well. Even as far west as bodega bay, sort of hard to imagine but the wind gusts were dealing with are unprecedented. The concern from fire officials is that an 80 or 90 mile an hour wind gust could spread embers from miles and start fires throughout this evacuation area. If you havent already evacuate. Cornell barnard has been on the ground in traffic on highway 101 and it is backed up but that is the evacuation route. Just be patient and stay safe. Back to you. All right. Kate, were joined on the phone by abc news correspondent will reeve live in healdsburg. Good morning, will. Good morning. Yeah, we are out here on chalk hill road looking for any sort of fire and weve found it. Its all up in the hills around us. Right now what seems to be the strategy from the Fire Department is structure prottion. Every house, every vineyard, every place where people are or where they live, is protected by at least one fire truck and firefighters are going around trying to put out whatever they can. Where weve been all morning for the past few hours theyve been doing a great job of doing that structure protection, but it is smoky, it is windy and when the gusts pick up it is really, really bad. Its schick and the fire moves very quickly. Definitely a dynamic situation. Since youve been there can you talk about the winds there . Over 90 Miles Per Hour in terms of the gusts in those hills there. And thats pushing the flames towards the historic and incredibly vibrant downtown of healdsburg. How close are those flames, is the front line right now to the area were talking about in healdsburg, the most populated area downtown . So far it is not encroaching too dramatically but the winds as you mentioned are so dynamic and powerful that that cou change quickly and that is why authorities evacuated so many of these areas in an abundance of caution and everyone who has gotten out made the right decision because the fire is going so fast. Many houses here where we are up in the hills a little bit away from downtown, look to be the danger but the firefighters are doing a great job keeping the flames at bay, guiding the fires tore where it will not get the structures but with the were in the middle of a gust, kind of a medium power one and its blowing smoke in our face and kicking up debris and, of course, if those were embers, that could start new fires spotting across roads. Everyone has to continue to be very careful as the fire comes down the hill. As of right now, it is not yet out of the hills but that could change. Were starting to see our first aerial support this morning. A plane dropping retardant on one of the hills in the healdsburg area. That is our first sight of that. Sunlight is out and hopefully they can tackle it a little more with the sunlight out. Yeah. That is going to be major key when the light comes up, when authorities are able to see what exactly it is theyre up against, that will be helpful. Its dramatic at night in the Early Morning hours driving through these hills because the only thing you can see especially with all the power out up here, is the flames and the only glow and thats sort of how you orient yourself around trying to find the fire you go to the flames. Of course once the suns comes up, there will be more smoke, so its harder to see the Bigger Picture of where the fire is. Its easy her to know where you are relative to the flames and will give everyone a Bigger Picture of where the fire is going and what needs to be done next. Were looking at a shot from sky 7 of highway 101 just completely backed up with traffic which obviously is frustrating for people who are in that jam but also a good sign that people are getting out of the area. I know youre in a neighborhood do you feel like everyone has evacuated . Are you still seeing residents around in terms of people . Is it whats it like . Where weve been all morning we havent seen anyone but authorities which is a comforting sign knowing the pros are on the job and keeping everyone safe and everyone theyre keeping safe, all the houses theyre protecting theyve moved out. That traffic was starting to grow when we drove north on shut down 101 to get to where we are this morning and, of course, you say the traffic is only building, that makes sense because where we are we havent seen anyone but fire authorities from many counties and cities as far south as San Francisco. We were embedded with a group from San Francisco trying to protect the house. They did a great job doing that next to a vineyard and there are no people, no residents weve seen so far in the areas weve been traversing the past few hours. Can you talk about what kind of effort youve seen by individuals to protect their homes or properties . You know, ive seen some conflicting reports on social with people saying oh, you should water your lawn and, you know, you should water your vineyards and then police saying no, emphatically dont do that a e we need to conserve water at this time. Well, the best structure protection you can do is far in advance, not reaction nary to the fire encroaching on your home or property. If you have the proper clearance, following the codes california has in place a lot of the houses here seem to have good clearance but of course theyre in a dry hilly area with fuel. Yesterday when we were driving through healdsburg and windsor, speaking to people evacuating, packed up their trucks and on the on ramp, we spoke to one man a contractor on his neighborhood street getting his children fed. He didnt know where they were going to go. Sometimes the only way to prepare is to gather your essentials and the people who are essential to you and get out. Thats what a lot of people seem to be doing. All right. Thank you so much for being on the phone with us. Well be in touch with you later and stay safe out there as youre in sounds likes close to the fire zones. An update from cal fire looks like the fire has now expanded to 30,000 acres. It grew by almost 5,000 acres overnight. That wind is taking its toll. We are going to go ahead and speak to abc 7 News Reporter Cornell Barnard again. Cornell, youve been on highway 101 through Sonoma County. Im sure youre still stuck in that jam we were looking out from sky 7. Hey, kate. Were not. Were heading north on highway 101 at this point and as you can see it is a complete ghost town because highway 101 north is closed from steel lane in santa rosa. Were actually heading up north to where will is in the city of healdsburg. I have to tell you, we are riding in our abc news van van and it is rocking. High winds gusting across 101 right now. About ten miles to the south of us, people are heading out of town because the Fire Department and the Police Department telling people who live in the city limits of Santa Rosa West of highway 101 and north of highway 12 to evacuate immediately. Mandatory evacuations for that area. And really, here is why. The kincade fire continues to jump lines to the north of us. This video was shot in healdsburg in the last two hours. This is highway 128 at chalk hill road. Embers blowing across the road from those gusty winds. It is just an incredible sight up there. Cal fire explains how they are doing battle with these massive fierce winds. Were looking at the winds that are strong, they did pick up later than anticipated. But the up on the mountain ranges on the ridges it started around midnight or a little bit before. Those firefighters have their work cut out for them right now. Sadly, we are seeing structure loss in the healdsburg area, this is the soda rock winery in healdsburg that is on fire from those embers. Cal fire doing its best to keep the kincade fire at bay, but you know, its a losing battle at this point with the extreme weather conditions. Weve been heading up 101 north for the last, what, steve, ten miles here, were seeing debris all over the road. There are branches, there are tree limbs, so its very difficult. And a good reason why they have closed this highway 101 completely heading north. Guys, back to you. Cornell, what do you know about 116. Youve been focused on 101 and where youre driving. We hear 116 is very jammed up too in the sebastopol area. Definitely. We came from there. You saw that, it is jammed completely from really north of santa rosa buy centennial way, steel lane heading south. Sheriffs department telling people get out of town, head south on 101. As you saw, we saw these epic backups happening. People going nowhere fast. Theyre telling folks stay off the frontage roads, but people are still heading on the frontage roads because 101 on ramps are jammed. So at this point, its its just a real challenge to get on to the freeway to head south. But once you hit the roenick park area, traffic seems to open up. All right. And thank you very much. Needless to say if you dont need to go up to that area at all dont do so and dont get in the path of the fire. The roads are to be used for evacuation. Absolutely. Thats it. And the winds as we foe are picking up throughout the bay area including in the east bay. Abc senior meteorologist rob mars anno filed this report for us from the Berkeley Hills this morning. Reporter the lights are still on but the winds are picking up as the historic and potentially damaging wind event unfolds. Not just the potential for spreading more fire, if one does happen to spark but fanning the flames of the kincade fire, thats going to be enough to take down trees and potentially some Power Outages where the lights are still on. Pg e has preemptively turned off te power to nearly a million customers across Northern California. Thats frustrating but when talking about a setup like this its not a bad idea. The winds expected to crank through the day today. Hopefully we can get through this unscathed. A dangerous situation no doubt. Reporting from the hills in berkeley, california, rob marciano, abc 7 news. Thank you. This is again a map of the Sonoma County incident. All of those areas in purple are under mandatory evacuation. You can see thats really most of the county with that red area, the kincade fire, which we know is growing. We have new information and numbers in for you this morning on that fire. 30,000 acres have now burned. Thats up almost 5,000 acres overnight. And then some other unfortunate news we were seeing 11 containment overnight and now its dropped down to 10 containment. Also want toive gou other updated numbers. The number of structures destroyed is now 79. Thats up from 77. However, this is the part you need to Pay Attention to. This is why so many people are evacuating or getting out of there, getting out of harms way. The number of structures threatened is now at 31,175. Nearly 32,000 structures are threatened by this fire. The number of structures damaged right now is at 14. The good news, if there is any to come out of this, so far no fatalities or injuries and we certainly hope it stays that way in terms of both First Responders and civilians. Definitely if youre in one of those evacuaton zones, and you can see its broken up to from one to ten. Each of those evacuation zones as we learn from Sonoma County supervisor david this morning has 20 to 50,000 people. He didnt have an exact number but hundreds of thousands have evacuated. The county has about 500,000 people so its not the totality of that but its a significant number. So if youre in that area if youre among them please get out if you havent done so already. All this expansion happening overnight. So for the past few hours its been just a very nerveracking scene to watch as the people escape from the fire. All the people on the freeway trying to figure out where to go. The Finley Community center which was an Evacuation Center has actually been evacuated. Its now part of the evacuation zone. Im just reading some information, asking people to go to the marin fair grounds 10 avenue of the flags in san rafael. So much farther south theyre asking people to go to. Petaluma shelters are all full. Right. People have to find somewhere else to go. We have that information where you can go, thats all on abc7news. Com. In the meantime lets bring in meteorologist lisa argen who has been tracking these winds. Lisa . What are you measuring . That is so far south. Youre right. The san rafael civic center, it is incredible. The winds peaked. Healdsburg hills, to 93 miles an hour. Looking at mount saint helene, 4,000 feet. Peak wind gust of 87 miles an hour. The winds are beginning to pick up all across the bay area. Its all due to the tight pressure gratent from High Pressure and this cold air, low pressure to the east of us. A live look outside where it looks hazy. You can see the camera shaking, 60 downtown. 49 in redwood city. With very little wind, now its beginning to pick up a little bit of a breeze for you. Pacifica 56 and looking from our exploratorium camera you can see sun, also the poor air quality, the erratic winds allowing for the smoke to be drifting to the south pushing off into the ocean, we will be looking at the air quality advisory today. Concord 57, livermore 56 and look above 1,000 feet now hawkeye is about 4,000 feet. 61mileanhour wind gusts. Looking at 69 here. Mount tam has been out of the north 30 miles an hour. Look at the Oakland Hills, that has picked up and as well as the East Foothills picking up over 30 miles an hour. At the surface looking at the winds, look at them pick up in San Francisco, 31mileanhour wind gusts, hayward, were beginning to see these winds mix down and thats why we have the wind advisory for the entire bay area. The wind warning for the upper elevations and the red flag warning through 11 00 tomorrow. Heres a look at the winds throughout the rest of the day. The wind gusts 8 00 weve got them clocked over 35 miles an hour for the entire east bay. The delta look at the reds on the peninsula, down all the way through Half Moon Bay up to 30 miles an hour. This will cause issues for sfo as well and looking at 4 00, were not seeing much of a change. This is 1 00 in the morning still gusty winds out there. By the time we get to about 11 00, 12 00 tomorrow things will lighten up. This is 9 00 and theyre blowing through the delta with the offshore component and event they lighten up. A look at the smoke forecast starting out right now, the blue indicates not a whole lot of smoke, but some haze. You saw the live shot out there. 3 00, we have pockets of it. Now remember the wind is strong out of the northeast so its mainly blowing right through santa rosa off the coast into the ocean. But we also have north wd. Were looking at some of the smoke, too, throughout the bay today and the next several days. This is 6 00 tonight. So heres a look at our fire danger index. 10 00 today, highlighting the upper elevations of the north bay the diablo range, but down in the valleys were looking at 30 to 40mileanhour wind gusts. Midnight, still gusty upper elevation winds and looking at things really settling down as we get into monday. Heres a current Temperature Check where numbers are mild with the winds blowing and you can see it is slightly warmer out there. Kincade fire, 55 degrees. With the east wind at 9. Gusts over 25 miles an hour. You know what that means for the embers that can leap out miles ahead and the relative humidity, were in the 17 range. 25 in pfremont and all of this not helping the fire conditions throughout the bay today. Breezy to windy, the accuweather sevenday forecast looking at that break tomorrow we need and then late tuesday into wednesday, another offshore wind event is likely. There is any good news in the forecast today as far as the fire is concerned . No. In terms of the winds, no, not at all. How about in the next week or two in terms of rain . Were not looking at any rain at all. If we can get the winds to calm down thats a huge plus. The relative humidity goes up and the onshore component the sea breeze would help for sure. Little break tomorrow. There is no rain in the next 16 day outlook. The fire report that just came out this morning said they dont expect full containment on the kincade fire until november th. Yeah. These winds are just the worst case scenario. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much and we will have continuing coverage of the yourbut as you get older,thing. It naturally begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness, or even trouble with recall. Thankfully, the breakthrough in prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory. The secret is an ingredient originally discovered. In jellyfish. In clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve shortterm memory. Prevagen. Healthier brain. Better life. We want to update you on the current situation. Welcome back. We have new video of the fire burning at soda rock winery. It was completely destroyed. Those flames burning host. Wind gusts have been in the 80 to 90 mile per hour range as far as gusts are concerned which are leading to extremely widespread evacuations. About 90,000 people are under Evacuation Orders as just about Sonoma County under Evacuation Order from zones 1 to 10. The reason is the fire is spreading rapidly and the threat expanding with the winds that are howling at this hour. Lets bring in meteorologist lisa argen. The kincade fire, it is 10 contained and talk about how fast the winds are right now. Upper elevations above 1,000 feet. See hawkeye, this is over 4,000 feet. 6 mile an hour winds. Knoxville creek, thats also very high. Getting lower at maybe 1800 feet. Oakland hills, look at East Foothills at 34 miles an hour. The colors indicate the strong winds out of the northeast perhaps blowing embers spreading the fires to the south. And west as you heard the evacuation to bodega bay. The surface winds fairfield, 59 mile an hour gusts and santa rosa has a gust of 40 miles an hour. Livermore and hayward over 25 miles an hour. San francisco 31 mile an hour. Straight out of the north. Lighter winds along the peninsula. Those will pick up as well. Heres a projection of the wind gusts throughout the day today. The colors indicate strong winds. 1 00 in the afternoon we are looking 25 to 35mileanhour wind gusts from the peninsula up to the north and they are still that offshore component 4 00. This dries out the atmosphere and allows the fire to spread and were continuing through the overnight hours. We have our high wind warning, red flag warning through 11 00 tomorrow. Here we are 9 00 in the morning still a little breezy here. Certainly not as bad as it is today. But this is how long this event is. It is a Long Duration event and creating not only the spreading of the fire but the relative humidity 20 in oakland, only 7 00. This will continue to dry out the atmosphere. Its a single digits. The kincade fire, 11 relative humidity, wind gusts 25 Miles Per Hour. The smoke projection throughout the day. The winds are strong, erratic, and will continue to blow some of the haze. There is not a spare the air but an air quality alert. Most of the activity blowing from the northeast so its pushing into santa rosa, off the coast to the ocean, but still were getting some of the Straight North winds with so thats allowing for smoke over the bay area today. A rough time of it with the winds continuing. Heres our fire danger index that coincides with the gusty winds from the high wind warning from the north bay mountains, the wind advisory, mt. Diablo had a wind gust over 55 miles an hour. Were looking at terrible weather for this situation that continues throughout the day and looking at the relative humidity still dropping as the winds dry out the air. No rain in sight. And containing the fire is difficult today. Its impossible. At this point its partly about keeping people safe. Thats exactly right. The evacuation yesterday that had the forecast knowing that the winds were going to be this strong. Yep. 24 hours said windsor get out. Into santa rosa. Saw what happened two years ago, move out. Thank you. We do have new information on whats going on in terms of the numbers when it comes to the kincade fire. Again, youre looking at the Sonoma County incident map of the evacuation zones. Ten evacuation zones. Many of those now this morning including the santa rosa area. That redpart, of course, the kincade fire burning farther and farther southwest. Right now lets give you quick information before we get to a phone interview. Just quickly, this fire kincade fire is at 30,000 acres. 10 containment, nobody injured, 31,175 structures are under threat. 79 structures destroyed. Containment has gone down from 11 to 10 p which obviously thats not good news as the Fire Department and everyone tries to get this under control. Its hard to get ahead of it when dealing with wind gusts of 80, 90 Miles Per Hour. Weve been trying to get paul on the phone. Is he available . Im here. Good morning. Weve been thinking about you, of course. We know you live in santa rosa. I was texting with you yesterday and you said you were packing up your stuff because you live in larkfield. Are you evacuated from your home . Yeah. There are several of us that work for santa rosa Fire Department that did finish rebuilding the area and we are now under a mandatory evacuation. I have a lot of eerie similarities between that and this one. With the santa rosa Fire Department. They are staffed up and were here for what comes our way. Well, i was with you at your home a year ago, the Year Anniversary of when the 2017 fires and you had just rebuilt, really excited what is this like for you to have to pack up again and then go to your job as a santa rosa firefighter to try to help other people and deal with the encroaching flames . You know, we knew this had the potential to come. The focus has been on our job and the protection of our respective communities. There are several of us from both police and Fire Agencies throughout Sonoma County that have been directly and indirectly impacted by the 2017 fires and those same firefighters and Police Officers are right back at it out on the streets and protecting our communities. Hey paul the focus yeah. We are hearing some reports that downtown santa rosa is now being evacuated. Can you confirm whether that is true . Ar north of highway 12, cuations west of highway 101 and then a good portion of the northern part of the city limits. Obviously if all those continue, those are Evacuation Orders and we work with cal fire out of the incident base and our Law Enforcement partners to make any adjustments if were looking at about 60,000 residents currently evacuated out of santa rosa right now. About how maybe we should put it this way. Which neighborhoods are not evacuated at the moment . I know that could change, you know, with moments notice. Yeah. So right now, south of highway 12 the roseland area, our downtown which is close to where the Sonoma County fairgrounds is is not in the evacuation area and out into our Rincon Valley area a northern portion of Rincon Valley that kind of hugs the unincorporated Sonoma County to the north, that is currently at Evacuation Order but a vast majority is not an Evacuation Order. How about Fountain Grove or oakmont . A portion of Fountain Grove on the north side of just a little south of the Fountain Grove parkway. There is a portion of Fountain Grove. It is under the evacuation orr. It splits in half as you get into the Hidden Valley area. A lot of names are familiar from what we remember from the tubbs fire. Right now no Evacuation Order in oakmont. How about coffey park . Coffey park is evacuated. That went into mandatory Evacuation Order this morning. And have you been there in the city of santa rosa helping people evacuate or are you closer to a fire line . Tell me what youve been doing today. No. Right now our focus has been bouncing back and be forth between the incident command post and the city and just kind of getting tabs on whats going on around the city. Our staff are all actively patrolling right now because of the winds that were currently experiencing, our units responding to multiple trees and power lines down across santa rosa. Right now with a good part of our city under a Public Safety power shutoff, another significant portion of our city is currently evacuated. We have a significant number of trees and power lines down across the city as we speak. A lot going on in the city but were staffed up both from our police and Fire Departments and here for our communities. Thats why the psps was enacted. They anticipated the trees and power lines being down. That is coming to fruition. Im also hearing there could be evacuations taking place at the sutter Regional Hospital with the patients and everything. Based on what you described with the geography of the evacuation zone would that be accurate and play out and fit . Yeah. There have been evacuations and work being done at kaiser santa rosas main campus as well as sutter hospital. It would be best to [ inaudible ] actually my citys website. I dont have the current status of where theyre at as far as accepting patients but both of those hospitals have been working on plans to start diverting and redirecting. Where would they be going all the patients and can you talk about the sheer magnitude of that kind of work to get all those folks to safety . People who have medical conditions and the challenges there . Yeah. Its not just the hospitals. A lot of work done over the last couple Public Safety power shutoffs and our experience in 2017 that have put us in a better position with helping coordinate those from our care facilities to our Skilled Nursing facilities. We have had to evacuate them before and were in a similar situation now. Theres coordination between our city, the cy eoc, communication with arranging transportation if needed, so theres a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make those processes flow as smooth as possible. And paul, obviously you were fighting the fire two years ago in 2017 and your house burned down in the fire and part of the problem with those fires was that there was no warning. There was no opportunity to prepare. But this week there was. Have you noticed that . Does it feel different this time around . Yeah. There was a lot of advanced notice. There was a potential for a wind event. We started communicating to our public, but we much also communicating to them about the power shutoff. We know that there were concerns related to some of the lack of notifications that went out in 2017 and the agencies here in the county are definitely working to get as much information out as possible. With this particular incident, theres a lot of potential involved with the direction of this fire very well make a move and that has created multiple alerts both in the wild Emergency Alert on cell phones, the Emergency Alert system on television as well as nixl alerts. We have several agencies a lot of people are subscribed to multiple different accounts and so a lot of our Community Members are getting like i said multiple alerts from system, we at eas. One thing that is happening there is like i said a significant number of alerts just given the total numbers of communities affected. When youre evacuating everything from the healdsburg and windsor clear all the way out to the Pacific Ocean and then down into santa rosa thats a lot of people and thats a lot of agencies involved. Paul were going to let you go in a moment but just one more clarification about downtown santa rosa. I know you said it has not been evacuated, do you feel like there is a chance that thats coming . That downtown santa rosa and some of these other southern parts of the city might be evacuated today because this wind suspect going to quit . Yeah. You know, regardless of whether or not theyre in an Evacuation Order area or not, i think weve seen the potential of what can happen with these fires. Were seeing the winds and seeing the debris across our street. The communication and the coordination is going to be ongoing between the santa rosa Police Department, sown county Sheriffs Department and our unified commander fires. Theyre going to meet and discuss and they will not hesitate to put additional warnings and orders in place if needed. Paul, santa rosa fire, thank you so much for sharing your insight and your time at a time like this. We certainly appreciate it. Stay safe. You bet. I believe that we have reporter Cornell Barnard who has been with us throughout the mormg morning. Now it looks like youre in front of a house that just burned down. Where are you . Whats going on . Yeah. Kate and kristen we have made our way to healdsburg and finding a tragic site here. This is the soda rock winery here in healdsburg. Off 128. It is a total loss. It is gone. I spoke with a cal fire representative off camera a few minutes ago. This fire likely started from embers blowing from the kincade fire many, many miles away. In fact, steve, if you can show active fire here on the hill, thats a good five, six miles from where we are. The fire is still active there. But the winds have been fierce. They have been gusting all morning overnight and thats what likely caused this fire, caused this longtime winery here in healdsburg to burn from embers that were blowing in from those winds that lisa mentioned were blowing up to 50, 60 miles an hour. Want to show you how large the winery is. A big favorite for folks visiting healdsburg, locals as well, and this is like i said, completely gone, tons of core gaited metal here. This is the facade of the winery. Pretty much all that is left, brick facade. It says soda rock in front of it. Its just incredible how far this fire burned. Cal fire says it took just about an hour for most of this to go up in flames. All thats left like i said is the facade of the winery and this huge sculpture that appears to be a wild boar has been saved as well. Cal fire hoping to speak to us to give us an update on the fire but as far as we know this is the only structure in the city of healdsburg that has been lost. Trying to get more information about others as well. Back to you guys. Sounds like what youre saying is that embers flew from miles to get to that winery and just sort of burned that building and that property. Doesnt look like anything else around there is burned. Another question i know the 2017 fires, a lot of the vineyards actually acted like a fire break and i saw some vineyards, you know, behind your live picture that looked like they were okay. This sort of isolated patch that burned . Yeah. Exactly. There are vineyards all around us. Were surrounded by vineyards. What should have been a fire break did not. There was no competition from these strong winds carrying the embers. We had seen video that was coming in earlier this morning of the chalk hill road area embers blowing across that road. Thats not far from where we are actually. The embers blowing through the air causing well causing this structe go up in flames. Yeah. I mean we heard earlier that in one of our interviews that we did that when you have an ember and it drops in some place like this given the Current Conditions and winds and dryness 90 chance you will start a fire and thats what happened there. Cornell, can you talk about the historical significance of soda rock . I think its pretty well known for people love it for weddings, special events and i think its a landmark in Alexander Valley, right . As far as we know, yes. Were hoping to speak with somebody who may have worked here or owner in the next couple minutes. I dont know too much about the history. Its been here a long time. Lots of weddings and special events and wine tasting, of course. We are in the heart of prime wine country up here in healdsburg. And this is a destination not only for folks in the bay area but folks really all around the world. Cal fire has set up just on the other side of the parking lot here. We have seen Fire Departments from as far as seeing another strong excuse me another strong gust that is blowing this core re gaited metal around. Skmt gusts have come up from time to time. We saw that driving up here. The 20 mile stretch from santa rosa up here to healdsburg was fast and it was furious and a little scary. High profile vehicle. It was rocking the abc 7 news van around. Luckily we made it here safely. There is debris all over the road. And certainly a trac sight here at this winery. Thank you so much, cornell, for that reporting. And please stay safe up there. All right. I think were going to get to meteorologist lisa argen who has been tracking our forecast all morning long. Lisa, anything new . Any improvementses . No. The critical fire weather continues and as we look at the winds above 1,000 feet, they gust over 30 miles an hour. This is going to be the scenario thought the day and were beginning to see these winds down at the lower elevation. The Oakland Hills just under 30 miles an hour as well as the East Foothills. Heres a look at the surface winds. Check out hayward and livermore over 25 miles an hour, San Francisco now straight out of the north, san mateo, over 15 miles an hour. So the bulk of the very, very gusty winds, had 40 to 60 miles an hour from the delta and santa rosa up in our north bay mountains why we have the high wind warning but the wind advisory for the rest of the bay area as we see tse winds finally beginning to gust down where we live here and theyll continue throughout the day here. As we go through the next hour here we are at 11 00, 12 00, and yes, heres the direction north, northeast, very strong, very fast moving winds, 30 to 35 miles an hour and then well continue into 4 00. Very little change. Now, of course, you know this means that fires can spread and the smoke will be pushed to the south maybe straight south into the southwest off to the ocean and also down into the city. Well get those hazy conditions. We will not see the winds lighten up. 1 00 in the morning still gusty winds at times and by early tomorrow things will begin to relax. We are seeing a little bit of an onshore flow with fog developing, but its not helping things out because these winds are just too strong from an offshore component. 17 relative humidity to the north everyone under about 30 so between the past couple hours we were at 60 and the relative humidity has dropped quickly with the strong winds really developing. With 25 mile an hour wind gusts around the fire the temperature is cool but the relative humidity bone dry. Heres a look at the air quality, the yellow indicating moderate and you can see that all around the bay here. Were looking at more situations perhaps over into the east bay. So far the winds have been up to 50 miles an hour, mt. Diablo but going to continue. Well not get the onshore flow or increase in relative humidity. The atmosphere dry out and smoke move into the bay area. It will be tis pursed because of the strong winds. Were going to see better air quality from time to time. Thats the only good thing about the winds that we can say right now. As wet g get through the day st looking at our fire danger index through the 10 00 hour highlighted in the north bay in the Higher Elevations into the east bay and the lighter color the blue in the lower elevations where you have the low possibility thats been the case as the emphasis has been in the north bay the higher elevation, east bay, but today 20 to 30 mile an hour wind gusts in the valleys and you can get tree branches down that could, you know, also cause more problems. Sure. We dont have any good news here until the winds back off which is going to be late overnight tonight. We just hope we can get through that without more fire sparking. Yeah. Its amazing how quickly. But its not when you think about how strong the winds are. It makes sense that, you know, these are just blown out miles. People dont think about it but also the car accident danger too with the trees and the power lines down and, of course, the Traffic Signals out. Were seeing reports of that out of chp. And smoke even not in an evacuation or outage area. Not having power and being able to get all the information, so yes, it is its going to be a rough go of it today. Thank you. We want to show you video we just got into the abc 7 newsroom. This is of the fire burning the kincade fire as you look at the new video we are going to give you the latest updated figures. Burned 30,000 acres. Remember started near the geyserville area, 30,000 acres pushing south towards healdsburg. It is 10 contained. 31,000 more than 31,000 structures threatened because of that fire. 79 structures have been destroyed and a reminder even Evacuation Centers are in the evacuation zone. Go farther south than before to the marin fair grounds. Lets not forget 90,000 people under mandatory Evacuation Orders in the area. We also want to tell you a little bit more about the soda rock winery which sadly has been destroyed. Completely burned down in Cornell Barnards report. A little here about the winery. Soda rock has a 150 year history that started in 1869. It was the original site of the Alexander Valley general store and post office. It was sort of the central hub of activity for the valley. You know n recent years its become really a place for its been lovingly restored and now been very popular for wine tasting and special events and weddings and visitors really love the land mark there. Sort of one of the first places to get the wine country going before the wine country was the wine country right. Soda rock was there and it was a fixture in the community and now you can see it seems, i dont know, in a matter of an hour, burned to the ground nothing left except the metal boar statute and a few brick walls. Embers picked up from the kincade fire and its far from the front lines and yet, it stands no more despite the fact that there are vineyards nearby that should have protected it. The embers and winds so erratic, hard to say and with the tinder dry conditions it sparks like that. Seat thats why the danger is with us today. Thank you so much. Were going to continue our coverage of the kincade fire. The outages and of course all. 6, 7, 8 big dreams start with small steps. But dedication can get you there. So just start small. Start saving. Easily set, track and control your goals right from the chase mobile® app. Chase. Make more of whats yours®. Shouldnt mean a change in standards. Thats why thanks to you were rated number one in Customer Satisfaction by j. D. Power. Welcome back. We are going to get to meteorologist lisa argen who has been doing a great job tracking our weather and all this wind causing an awful lot of problems. 180,000 people under Evacuation Orders just tweeted by the Sonoma County sheriff. The largest they have ever remembered in history. Were looking at the winds the big culprit in all of this where theyre gusting at, atlas peak 36, Oakland Hills getting windy as well as the East Foothills. The winds mix down to the surface and these are surface winds around hayward and livermore. 25 mile an hour livermore, San Francisco, out of the north and santa rosa and fairfield 40 to 60 miles an hour. Calm in the south bay but it will be breezy throughout the day today. Heres a look at the winds, the gusts throughout the day anywhere from 20 to 35 Miles Per Hour. 1 00 still have the purples, the reds, that means the winds are gusting out of the northeast drying out the atmosphere. We are in the teens right now with relative humidity. That will continue to drop. Its not going to be better throughout the oht hours where we have a breeze in fairfield. The high wind wng in the north bay, wind advisory for the lower elevations and red flag warning right on through tomorrow morning. 9 00 monday the winds offshore but not gusting, the wind event continuing with the low humidity. You dont have the wind but the air is dry. Any wind you get, of course, is not going to be a good thing. So the fire conditions up to the north are looking at the gusty winds, the low relative humidity the temperatures have dropped the air quality across the bay is moderate. Were seeing some haze and some smoke but because the winds are so gusty to the north of us thats why were looking at the smoke mostly being blown out to sea. All right. Thanks so much. Want to pass along a couple bits of information one regarding the Kaiser Hospital in santa rosa. Yeah. They have been ordered to evacuate as of this morning. They actually started the process last fight to get people out so theyre completing that process of transferring 110 patients and same thing going on at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital. Which is just so reminiscent of what happened two years ago only this time folks were a little more ahead of the game. We have to get to abc 7 News Reporter Cornell Barnard live at the soda rock winery. Still see flames behind you. Yeah. For sure. This is the aftermath of this tragic fire which started several hours ago here at the soda rock winery off 128 here in healdsburg. This has been a real tragedy for the Alexander Valley. This place is a fixture here. According to its website this winery has been here since 1869. Now there is really nothing left except the brick facade of the winery as steve can show that. And a sculpture out in front of a wild boar which was really another fixture perhaps newer here at the winery too. It is a total loss. We have been Walking Around this property since we got here 45 minutes ago. It is sad. Cal fire spokesperson tells me embers from the kincade fire burning to the north of us several miles from here likely started this fire. The umbers carried by the fierce, ferocious winds we have seen all morning here. We are hoping to speak to someone in the next 30 minutes but they are very, very busy this morning. Were seeing firefighters from all over Northern California here today. In fact, just saw is somebody from the Fire Department from nevada county, Southern California and here we come, here we go. More of these winds continue to gust through and it is it is tough. And this winery appears to be a total loss but as you see to the back of us here, the ranch house is completely intact and so are several other out buildings around this winery. This longtime winery. Beautiful place. Fixture here as i said. And place for special events and for a lot of weddings. Were hoping to get more information as this wind picks up here. It is fierce and ferocious. In santa rosa for most of the morning d a mass exodus happening there considering mandatory Evacuation Order orders are going on there. A lot of people heading south on highway 101, highway 101 north is closed. We were able to get through and show you whats going on here. We hope to have more information for you in the next half hour. Back to you guys. Cornell, looks like theres a building a house perhaps behind you. Do you know if firefighters were there for structure protection or did the wind just it got lucky and didnt catch fire . You know the wind just got out of hand really. It is unclear if the Fire Department was here all morning but they were certainly not far away. The winds no match for the best efforts of the Fire Department coming in. It appears that this winery wasr a victim of these embers and as far as we know right now, lots of firefighters are in the area. And no other buildings have been burned and we just traveled in from highway 101. Its about ten miles from here. All right. Cornell barnard thank you so much. If you have a mask we would feel better if you went and got that if you have one. Right now on the phone is windsor mayor dominic papulli. Thank you so much for making time for us this morning. Of course. We understand your town is evacuated or at least everyone is under Evacuation Orderers. Are you confident all your residents are out . The vast majority are out, very proud of my town. The leadership of our law our lw enforcement and residents. We executed the largest evacuation in our town yesterday in about five hours. And mayor, i heard you speaking at the press conference yesterday morning urging everyone in windsor to get out alongist the mayor of healdsburg saying the same. What has it been like there and where are you . Can you tell us how close the flames are and fire wise windsor has been affected . Ted . Ted . Ted . Sure. Im currently