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A spate of wildfires fanned by strong winds swept through northern California’s wine country on Monday, killing at least 10 people, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses and chasing some 20,000 people from their dwellings.
The fatalities brought the official wildfire-related death toll in California this year to 13 and represented the greatest loss of civilian life from a single cluster of blazes in the state in a decade, state fire officials said.
Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for Napa, Sonoma and Yuba counties, encompassing some of the state’s prime wine-making areas, as the blazes raged unchecked and engulfed the region in thick, billowing smoke that drifted south into the San Francisco Bay area.
He later extended the declaration to include four more northern California counties and Orange County in Southern California, and requested a U.S. presidential disaster declaration to support state and local firefighting resources.
Sonoma County bore the brunt of the fatalities, with seven fire-related deaths confirmed there, according to the sheriff’s department. Two others died in Napa County and one more in Mendocino County, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).
Details of those deaths were not immediately available from state or local officials. But KGO-TV in San Francisco, citing unnamed California Highway Patrol sources, described one victim as a blind, elderly woman found dead in the driveway of her home in Santa Rosa, a town in Sonoma County.
Brad Alexander, a spokesman for the governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said the death toll could climb higher.
The current tally constituted 10-year record for civilian wildfire fatalities in the state, dating back to 14 who lost their lives in a series of blazes that swept San Diego County and other parts of Southern California in October 2007, according to CalFire spokeswoman Janet Upton.
