Tubbs Fire

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The Tubbs Fire was the most destructive wildfire in California history, burning parts of Napa, Sonoma, and Lake counties in Northern California during October 2017, and affecting the city of Santa Rosa, California the most. It was one of more than a dozen large fires that broke out in early October and were simultaneously burning in eight Northern California counties in what was called the "Northern California firestorm." By the time of its containment on October 31, the fire was estimated to have burned 36,810 acres (149 km²), and at least 22 people had been killed in Sonoma County by the fire.

The fire incinerated more than 5,643 structures, including more than 2,800 homes in the city of Santa Rosa. In that city, the damage was estimated at $1.2 billion, with five percent of the city's housing stock destroyed.

The Tubbs Fire started near Tubbs Lane, named after Alfred Tubbs, the owner of a winery in that area in 1882. The Tubbs mansion had burned down in the Hanley Fire in 1964.

Video Tubbs Fire

Timeline

October 8

The Tubbs Fire started near Tubbs Lane in Calistoga around 9:43 p.m. on Sunday, October 8. Although the cause of the fire remains under investigation, Sonoma County emergency dispatchers sent fire crews to at least 10 reports of downed power lines and exploding transformers as the North Bay fires, including the Tubbs fire, began. At a weather station in north Santa Rosa, the peak wind gusts at 9:29 p.m. hit 30 mph; an hour later, they were 41 mph.

Pushed by strong winds from the northeast, the front of the fire moved more than twelve miles in its first three hours. The Mark West Springs area, north of Santa Rosa in unincorporated Sonoma County, was directly in the path of the fire. One exception to the destruction in that area was that all of the more than 1,000 animals at the renowned Safari West Wildlife Preserve were unharmed by the fire, saved by owner Peter Lang, who, at age 76, single-handedly fought back the flames for more than 10 hours using only garden hoses.

Sonoma County officials could have sent out an emergency alert to every cellphone in the region on Sunday night as the fire grew, but chose not to, saying such a widespread alarm would have hampered emergency efforts. Instead, Nixle SMS and email alerts were broadcast -- the first of these text messages going out at 10:51 p.m., and used a system called SoCo Alerts to notify people via cellphone; both are limited to those who sign up for these services. Officials also used a reverse 911 system that called landlines in certain areas. At 11:58 p.m., firefighters called for an evacuation order encompassing the area between the city of Calistoga and Santa Rosa.

October 9

By 1 a.m. on Monday, the fire, spreading quickly to the south and west, had reached Santa Rosa city limits. The front entered the city from the north, moving into the Fountaingrove area, then moving down ravines between Mark West Springs Road and Fountaingrove Parkway. Hundreds of homes and many other structures were destroyed, with tens of thousands of people evacuating with very little notice. The historic Fountaingrove Inn, the Fountaingrove Round Barn nearby, and a large Hilton hotel were destroyed. Nearly all of the 160 units at the Journey's End mobile home park were turned to rubble.

At about 1:30 a.m., Sonoma County officials began to evacuate neighborhoods in and around Santa Rosa.

By about 2 a.m., the fire, carried by near hurricane-level winds, had spread further to the west, crossing Highway 101. By 4:30 a.m., the winds had reached their peak speed of more than 60 miles per hour.

Early Monday morning, the fire reached the Coffey Park neighborhood, where it leveled much of the area. An estimated 1,300 structures, mostly detached homes, were destroyed. Other damage along several streets bordering Highway 101 included a Kmart store and numerous restaurants that burned to the ground.

By noon on Monday, two medical centers in Santa Rosa, Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, had been evacuated. Some Kaiser employees reportedly used their personal vehicles to evacuate some of the 130 patients at that hospital.

Other notable damage on Monday included the complete loss of a senior living complex, Oakmont of Villa Capri; Hidden Valley Satellite, a primary school; and the Santa Rosa portion of Paradise Ridge Winery. The Cardinal Newman High School campus was badly damaged, as was one end of the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts. Redwood Adventist Academy was also destroyed in the fire. Another large concentration of incinerated homes was in the Larkfield-Wikiup area, about a mile north of the city, where about 500 buildings were destroyed.

Of the 2,900 homes destroyed in Santa Rosa, over 200 of them belonged to doctors associated with the area hospitals, including Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Hospital's Santa Rosa Center, and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Additionally, the fire destroyed Santa Rosa Community Health's Vista Campus, the largest in its system, which served 24,000 people annually.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company cut off natural gas to 31,000 customers in the Santa Rosa and Windsor areas as a precaution.

October 10

Wind direction turned clockwise from northeasterly to southerly (compare MODIS satellite images). At a town hall meeting on the evening of October 10 in Santa Rosa, Cal Fire representatives reported that there could be as many as 3,000 structures lost to the Tubbs and Atlas fires.

October 11

On Wednesday, October 11, the entire town of Calistoga was evacuated; about 2,000 people were asked to leave. The escape for some was along roads walled by flames. The Lake County Sheriff's Office issued an advisory evacuation notice for residents in the Middletown area, to the north of Calistoga.

One active part of the fire was east of the town of Windsor, with the fire burning from Shiloh ridge to Chalk Hill Road and Knights Valley.

October 12

As of 7 a.m. on Thursday, the Tubbs Fire had burned 34,270 acres, and was 10 percent contained. In the city of Santa Rosa, officials said that the fire had destroyed an estimated 2,834 homes, along with about 400,000 square feet of commercial space.

As of Thursday morning, efforts continued to be focused on two areas:

Near the northwest corner of Napa County, firefighters were battling the fire around Mount St. Helena, but they started pulling back before noon; the fire had hopped Highway 29, which runs adjacent to the mountain north of the evacuated town of Calistoga. There was no fire activity in the town itself, with the blaze spreading north and east of Calistoga through rugged terrain into Lake County, south of Middletown. By Thursday afternoon, only a few dozen people had refused to evacuate from Calistoga.
In northern Sonoma County, the fire was being monitored in the area to the east of Healdsburg and Windsor. Sonoma County ordered Rio Lindo Adventist Academy, a boarding school on the outskirts of Healdsburg near the edge of the Tubbs fire, to prepare to evacuate if necessary.

Among the losses reported on Thursday was the destruction of the Santa Rosa hillside home of late Peanuts creator Charles Schulz; his widow, Jean Schulz, escaped unhurt. By Thursday evening, 28,000 customers in the Santa Rosa and Windsor areas still had not had their gas service restored.

October 13-31

On Friday morning, October 13, the fire was 25 percent contained. It remained about two miles outside of Calistoga's city limits.

A fire erupted in the hills east of Oakmont late Friday night, prompting the mandatory evacuation of neighborhoods early Saturday morning from Calistoga Road to Adobe Canyon Road, along Highway 12. The zone included several schools and the Oakmont Village retirement neighborhood. Evacuations for the area were lifted by late the following Wednesday.

By Saturday morning, October 14, the fire was 44 percent contained. A "small army of firefighters and police" was positioned between where the fire was most active, north of Calistoga, and the city itself.

In the Fountaingrove area of Santa Rosa, firefighters and utility crews combed through the ruins left by the fire. Fire officials searched for dangerous hot spots that could re-ignite the blaze, and utility workers began cleaning up the demolished neighborhoods.

Maps Tubbs Fire

Containment progress

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Comparison to the Hanly Fire

In 1964, the Hanly Fire, the largest fire in Sonoma County history, burned 52,700 acres, with striking similarities to the Tubbs Fire. The two fires differed, however, because since 1964, hundreds of expensive homes, a golf course and clubhouse restaurant, office and medical buildings, light industry, lakeside retirement homes, a long row of nursing facilities, and two hotels were built in the Fountaingrove area, which had been almost entirely open land in 1964.

The path the Hanly Fire took in 1964, as well as the areas it burned, were very similar to the Tubbs Fire: from Calistoga, along Porter Creek and Mark West Springs roads into Sonoma County, burning homes along Mark West Springs and Riebli roads, through Wikiup, and to Mendocino Avenue, where it stopped, across the street from Journey's End Trailer Park. The fire was propelled by 70 mph winds, close to hurricane strength; it initially went east from Calistoga, but on the third day its direction switched, going south-west from Calistoga to Santa Rosa in only about half a day. But the fire only destroyed a few dozen homes, because the area it burned was so sparsely settled in 1964.

Sonoma County has four "historic wildfire corridors," including the Hanly Fire area. New homes in the fire zones must meet building code requirements for fire-resistant materials for siding, roofing and decks, with protected eaves to keep out windblown embers. Those measures made little difference. For example, despite a 100-foot fire break that ringed much of the Fountaingrove II subdivision, which consisted of 600 upscale homes in the same path as the Hanly Fire, virtually the entire subdivision was destroyed by the Tubbs Fire.

Tubbs Fire Santa Rosa aerial view - YouTube

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Network and social media coverage

The fire was covered extensively and in-depth by news outlets from around the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. In addition to local coverage, CNN and Fox News were on scene in Sonoma County, focusing primarily on northern Santa Rosa, California. The majority of communication regarding the fire came from social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Nixle.

From October 9 through 13, Snapchat ran a geolocation tagging filter to isolate material about the fire, and these posts were featured on the Discover page. By October 11, over 12,000 videos and images had been uploaded to Snapchat. Donald Laird, a professor at Santa Rosa Junior College, and Richard Dunn, a local photographer, submitted featured posts.

On social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, hashtags used to identify information about the fire included #santarosafire, #tubbsfire, and #santarosastrong.

Twitter analytics revealed that the majority of tweets about the Tubbs Fire were posted on October 11.