Sonoma County residents seek normalcy when a fire disaster strikes

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HEALDSBURG – Shops were open, lower than normal, in downtown Healdsburg on Saturday – a normal day, if not for the warnings for evacuation and the smoke and falling ash, which threatened the onslaught of a massive wildfire by 30,500 homes and businesses in Sonoma, Napa, Solano counties and beyond.

Healdsburg and Guerneville, in Sonoma County, are on the path of the LNU complex fire, the most devastating of the three major complex fires that have destroyed California since Sunday. The blaze grew on Saturday, sending officials scrambling to send new evacuation warnings and warnings across the region.

As of Saturday night, the fire was 15 percent contained, burning through 325,000 acres, claiming four lives and destroying 845 buildings.

Evacuation orders and warnings are scattered across wine country. The fire claimed three lives in Napa County and one in Solano County, according to Cal Fire. No first responders were injured.

In Lake County on Saturday afternoon, the sheriff’s department ordered evacuations of residents to live near Hidden Valley Lake and Jerusalem Valley.

It could get worse. An incoming, dry thunder is proposed to hit the area on Sunday, enabling unpredictable winds to disperse the blazes and lightning strikes that could ignite new fires.

But for some residents in the towns of North Bay on the verge of their third major wildfire since 2017, all they wanted on Saturday was some sense of normalcy.

Bryan Menegon and his wife, Stephanie Quirk, spent a relaxing day in Healdsburg Plaza with their daughters, even though their home is under an evacuation board and ashes have been raining from the air all day.

“We’re just panicking,” said the 42-year-old Quirk. “We came to get ice cream and would do our normal weekend thing in all this chaos.”

The family lives in Middletown, Lake County, which is threatened by the Hennessey Fire. But her house is in the city, where she does not think the fire will reach. That they took a day trip to Healdsburg, which is threatened by another fire – the Walbridge – and is also under an evacuation heat.

The family came to visit the town of about 12,000 residents just as the 50,069-acre Walbridge fire, part of the LNU complex, became the top priority for firefighters who were responding to southwest winds in the area. Firefighters have ordered evacuations for many communities south of the Russian River basin, but so far in downtown Healdsburg east of Highway 101, it remains under an evacuation warning, as have parts of Windsor in the south.

Although the Walbridge Fire is thought to have made it to the northern edge of Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, the old-growing trees in the park’s main area were undamaged Saturday. That includes the park’s crown jewel – the more than 1,400-year-old Colonel Armstrong. Firefighters were deployed through the forest to protect it.

Crews have made progress on the other side of the Sonoma County line, however, and have lifted some evacuation files in Yolo County, according to Cal Fire Chief Chris Waters. Fires in the vicinity of the wine-rich Atlas Peak area in Napa have also “started to look a lot better,” he said.

Some residents even tried to live life as usual in Guerneville, southwest of Healdsburg and from the approaching fire. The city, which is under an evacuation board, has less than 5,000 residents, a quarter of whom are 65 and older. Despite the severe catastrophic threat, Keary and Sally Sorensen were focused on a more controlled nuisance literature.

The two have a cleaning company called Everclean North, and on Saturday laid public trash cans in an otherwise mostly empty downtown area.

“If we let our city get trash, we have a trash city,” said Keary Sorenson, who wore a face mask. “That we’re not going anywhere.”

The couple lives in Monte Rio, where Keary moved from Santa Cruz after losing everything in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Now they are raising concerns about themselves and their friends in Guerneville losing their businesses as one natural disaster after another – the 2017 Tubbs Fire, the Kincade Fire last year, the floods – raised tourist dollars.

“We lose this, we lose everything,” Keary said.

Quirk and Menegon in Healdsburg took a similar philosophy, saying they were accustomed to the almost annual evacuations. Quirk was working with her eldest daughter – 5-year-old Stella – when she was evacuated from Valley Fire. Stella was born two days later.