Two homes were destroyed and several others were damaged as firefighters worked to put out the blaze that forced dozens of residents to flee.
Officials said a rapidly spreading wind-driven fire destroyed two homes and damaged others in the hills of the city where about 500 residents were told to evacuate, Friday.
City fire chief Damon Covington said calls began coming around 1.30pm reporting a blaze around the front of a home in the Oakland hills. While winds ranged from light breezes to red-flag conditions with gusts up to 40mph (64km/h), crews found the inferno spreading fast.
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Covington said: “The wind was whipping around, though.
The two homes had one “extensively” burned, and the second had a limited amount of flame damage, Michael Hunt — a fire department spokesman — told The Associated Press. Smoke and water damage from the fire spread to fewer than 10 other homes. Initial reports had conflicting numbers of structures affected.
The blaze brought gridlock from motorists leaving for homes along the 580 Freeway between the San Francisco Bay Area and central California as smoke blew over the 440,000-resident city.
Flames leaped between sides of the roadway, fanned by the winds and fueled by eucalyptus trees that were burned quickly as a result, Covington said. Three hours later, it had grown to 13 acres (5 hectares). Crews were able to get it contained but at least hundreds of firemen remained on the scene until about 4pm battling it in other areas.
“Fewer than 10 homes damaged, hundreds of homes, structures that were threatened,” the chief said.
A 1991 fire in the Oakland hills destroyed nearly 3,000 homes and killed 25 people.
This comes as forecasters had issued red-flag fire danger warnings until Saturday from the central coast through the San Francisco Bay Area and into far northern Shasta County, not far south of the Oregon border.
Pacific Gas and Electric turned off power in 19 northern and central California counties, leaving about 16,000 customers without electricity Friday. Forecasters warned that a powerful “diablo wind” — the fall season sibling of southern California’s Santa Ana winds, known for their sweltering, parched breezes — would drive sustained gusts past 35mph in places, creating slippery conditions where power lines can ignite wildfires. NWS said the winds could reach up to 65 mph (104 km/h) along mountaintops. Gusty winds are forecasted to continue into part of the weekend.
Hunt said it was initially a vegetation fire, then it moved uphill from there near the freeway. But at least eight of those structures are already damaged.
He said hundreds of residents were being evacuated but did not know the precise figures.
That is indeed a big area — probably on the order of three miles that could potentially be evacuated, he said.
A local elementary school was preparing to act as an emergency shelter for those who fled.
In a statement on Friday, PG&E said that as many as about 20,000 customers could face a temporary power out in the next day or two.
The “region and duration of outages will depend on the weather at individual locations and not all customers will last for the same time period,” the utility said.
The cause of the Oakland fire was not immediately known. Two streets — Campus Drive and Crystal Ridge Court — were evacuated Friday at the direction of fire department personnel.
Meteorologist Brayden Murdock with the NWS’s Bay Area office said, “This has the potential of being the largest wind event we’ve had all year.” So we just wanted to warn people.
Further south in California, where ones began kicking up Friday and are poised to continue whipping their way through the region Saturday, targeted power shutoffs were also possible if weather conditions warranted.
Santa Anas are hot dry and gusty north-east winds blowing from the interior of southern California towards the coast and offshore – opposite to normal onshore flow which brings moist air in from the Pacific for that region.
Red-flag warnings had been issued by the National Weather Service for the valleys and mountains of Los Angeles county, parts of the Inland Empire, and the San Bernardino Mountains.
Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the NWS office serving the Los Angeles area, said winds around greater L.A. will be less robust than what is forecast up north — gusts from 25-40 mph (40-64 km/h) are possible in the mountains and foothills.
In the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains, the strongest winds were being reported Friday with gusts of 45-55mph (72-88 km/h) with isolated gusts of 60mph (96km/h), he said.
The winds are there and humidity is burning off, which we have. Wofford said if they did have a fire start that it could really take off given where conditions are right now.
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