A fast-moving fire fed by strong winds burned two homes on Friday and damaged several others in a hillside neighborhood in the city of Oakland, where roughly 500 people were ordered to evacuate, officials said.
Damon Covington, the city’s fire chief, said that at about 1.30pm, calls had come in reporting a fire in front of a home in the Oakland hills. Crews arrived as the inferno quickly grew with winds ranging from calm breezes to 40mph (64km/h) gusts during red-flag conditions.
“Wind was whipping,” Covington said.
Michael Hunt, a spokesperson for the fire department, said one of the homes had been significantly burnt while the second had minor damage from the flames. Fewer than 10 other homes had smoke and water damage. Early reports had conflicting numbers of affected structures.
The fire was near the 580 Freeway, which connects the San Francisco Bay Area to central California, causing traffic jams as people tried to leave the area and smoke wafted over the city of 440,000.
The blaze charred through eucalyptus trees, which spread the fire as flames jumped across sides of the roadway, Covington said. Within three hours, it grew to to 13 acres (about 5 hectares). By about 4pm, crews were able to stop it from advancing, though scores of firefighters continued to battle.
“We have less than 10 homes that have been damaged, and we had hundreds of homes, structures, that were threatened,” the chief said.
The fire was burning in the Oakland hills where a 1991 fire destroyed nearly 3,000 homes and killed 25 people.
It comes as forecasters issued red-flag warnings for fire danger until Saturday from the central coast through the San Francisco Bay Area and into northern Shasta county, not far from the Oregon border.
About 16,000 customers were without electricity Friday after Pacific Gas and Electric shut off power in 19 counties in the northern and central parts of the state. A major “diablo wind” – notorious in the autumn for its hot, dry gusts – was forecast to cause sustained winds reaching 35mph in many areas, raising the risk of power lines sparking a wildfire. The gusts could top 65mph (104 km/h) along mountaintops, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The strong winds are expected to last through part of the weekend.
The fire began as a vegetation fire near the freeway and grew uphill, Hunt said. At least eight structures have already been damaged.
He said “hundreds of residents” were being evacuated, but did not have an exact number.
“It’s a large, probably three-mile area that’s probably potentially evacuated,” he said.
A nearby elementary school was getting set up to serve as a temporary shelter for the evacuees.
A total of about 20,000 customers could lose power temporarily in the next couple of days, PG&E said in a statement Friday.
“The duration and extent of power outages will depend on the weather in each area, and not all customers will be affected for the entire period,” the utility said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the Oakland blaze. The fire department ordered people to evacuate Friday on two streets, Campus Drive and Crystal Ridge Court.
“This could end up being the most significant wind event for this year so far,” said meteorologist Brayden Murdock with the NWS’s Bay Area office. “We want to tell people to be cautious.”
Targeted power shutoffs were also possible in southern California, where another notorious weather phenomenon, the Santa Ana winds, are expected Friday and Saturday.
Santa Anas are dry, warm and gusty north-east winds that blow from the interior of southern California toward the coast and offshore, moving in the opposite direction of the normal onshore flow that carries moist air from the Pacific into the region.
The National Weather Service issued red-flag warnings for the valleys and mountains of Los Angeles county, portions of the Inland Empire, and the San Bernardino mountains.
Winds around greater Los Angeles won’t be as powerful as up north, with gusts from 25-40mph (40-64 km/h) possible in mountains and foothills, said Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the NWS’s Los Angeles-area office.
The strongest winds were being recorded in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains, where Friday there were gusts from 45-55mph (72-88 km/h) with isolated gusts up to 60mph (96km/h), he said.
“Humidities are drying out and we have the winds. If we had a fire spark, it could really spread quickly because of the current conditions,” Wofford said.
