The wind-fanned Kincade wildfire doubled in size on Sunday, threatening the north Bay area where 44 people died two years ago

The wind whipped through the flats of Sonoma county on Sunday morning, spreading dry autumn leaves and oily shreds of eucalyptus through the streets of downtown Santa Rosa.

California wildfires: millions without power as Kincade fire spreads – live Read more

Late the night before, authorities had ordered parts of this north San Francisco Bay area city to evacuate along with much of the surrounding county, as the wind-swept Kincade fire burned eight miles north-east.

Debbie, who declined to give her last name, stood in the doorway of her home in Coffey Park that she recently, finally finished rebuilding after it was destroyed by wildfire in 2017. She covered her face with both hands.

“I’m not leaving again. This time I’m gonna stay and I’m gonna burn in my house,” she said. “PG&E has not learned anything? Are they trying to kill us?”

The Kincade fire first erupted last Wednesday but doubled in size on Sunday, fueled by extreme wind conditions that saw gusts reaching over 100mph in some mountainous peaks. Authorities expanded evacuations throughout the week, extending them again as the fire spread into the edges of the small towns of Windsor and Healdsburg. By Sunday evening, more than 185,000 people had been ordered to leave their homes, while the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) utility cut power to millions of people in an effort to prevent its wind-damaged equipment from sparking further blazes.

For many Sonoma county residents, Sunday’s horror came in its unsettling similarity to the devastating 2017 North Bay firestorm that killed 44 people, destroyed thousands of homes and burned roughly 245,000 acres – a recent, ravaging trauma from which so many are still attempting to recover.

The Kincade fire remained a fraction of that size.

Coffey Park, a dense neighborhood in north Santa Rosa, is deep in the midst of rebuilding after it was all but destroyed in 2017. Freshly painted new homes stand next to naked wood frames, next to still empty lots, dry lumber piled on gravel. One homeowner evacuated with a hose still spraying over the fresh wood chips in their front yard.

With smoke from the fire bearing down, many Coffey Park residents had evacuated, but Ken Herland stood outside, watering his yard and the new wooden fence surrounding it with a garden hose. Herland has only lived in this house since July.

“We just put a new metal roof on the house,” he said as he worked the hose. “I’m not leaving. I left the last time.”

But, he said, “This time feels worse.”

This time is, objectively, not worse, and the large evacuation zones and many repeated warnings left residents far more time to prepare and leave before danger approached.

Herland’s daughter Jessica evacuated the horses at her ranch by the Pepperwood Preserve. She watched a neighbor’s video of the fire on her phone.

“The ranch isn’t on fire yet,” she reported back. “So far, we’re looking good. I’ll be hopeful until they tell me not to be.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Kincade Fire approaches a herd of alpacas in Sonoma county, California, on Sunday. Photograph: Ethan Swope/AP

Later in the morning, a few miles to the north, smoke began to fill the streets in the town of Windsor, tinting the dry trees and the evacuated homes orange in the light. Two CalFire firefighters filled their truck’s tank from a hydrant. By early afternoon, the fire would push to the outskirts of the town, where hundreds of firefighters worked to protect homes from spreading embers.

Further south, evacuees had gathered at the Sonoma county fairgrounds, a temporary shelter and incident command for firefighters who had traveled from across the state, and the country, to fight the Kincade. The site was littered with stacks of hay bales and multicolored pumpkins in anticipation of a weekend Halloween event and petting zoo, since cancelled. Instead, the grounds were overflowing with evacuees who had nowhere else to go.

New temporary residents watched the smoke billow up over town as the winds set the fire swirling at the edge of Windsor. The corrugated metal roofing on a barn building lifted and slammed down again with each gust.

Michele Cochrane said she had evacuated her Camp Meeker home over 15 miles west of here to the sound of a second world war air raid siren, after officials had extended evacuation lines to the Pacific Ocean.

“We were in the middle of dinner and there it blasts. The fire’s not even close to us, and yet we have to go through this,” she said. “We just loaded everything up and came on in. But now I’m glad we did because if you look at where the wind went, if there are any embers that way …” she trailed off, shaking her head.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fire damage is seen from the air in the Coffey Park neighborhood in Santa Rosa, California, after the 2017 wildfire. Photograph: Elijah Nouvelage/AFP/Getty Images

Cochrane has lived in the west county for roughly 40 years. She, her two sons and a roommate, along with two cats and two dogs were set up with cots and cages in the corner of a county fairgrounds building. A chicken was staying with a friend nearby.

“I’d rather them do it this way than be like, knocking on people’s doors at three in the morning,” said her son John.

“As much as we all really, really, really want to go home, we’re staying until tomorrow morning. But then that’s it,” said Cochrane – they would be going back, past the evacuation lines. “And I know the way.

“West county is a hearty bunch of people. We survive,” she said.

There is much to survive across Sonoma county, between the wild fires, the floods, and now, the rolling PG&E blackouts. As the sun set over the city, luminous gold and purple through the growing cloud of smoke, the new residents walked their dogs, ate tacos, chatted in the waning warmth of the evening.

And then most of the region was again plunged into darkness.