What We Know About the Kincade and Tick Fires Raging in California

Tens of thousands of Californians are evacuating their homes Friday morning as wildfires raged in Northern California’s wine country and in Los Angeles County to the south. The danger was expected to last at least throughout the weekend, with mass power blackouts potentially on the horizon — as the power company PG&E investigates whether a downed high-voltage transmission line caused one of the fires.

It’s fire season in California and strong winds in the northern part of the state — and forecasted gusts to come to the south — have made the blazes particularly difficult to fight. They’re only about 5% contained so far, and officials estimate about 10,000 structures are threatened.

The Kincade Fire, in Northern California, erupted near the wine-country town of Geyserville, right by the spot where a high-voltage transmission line went down. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) admitted it had a “transmission-level” outage near where that fire sparked, despite cutting power for nearly 200,000 people earlier this week in an effort to prevent fires. Officials have stopped short of saying that outage caused the Sonoma County fire, but PG&E said it was investigating.

"Cal Fire, the experts in this, will draw that ultimate conclusion," Bill Johnson, the utility's CEO, said at a news conference Thursday night. "We, still at this point, do not know exactly what happened. Something happened and it de-energized itself."

Residents still without power in the area of the Kincade Fire had grown tired of waiting, their power cut since Wednesday. Barbara Tonsberg, a 93-year-old former teacher, was killing time at a local IHOP, one of the few places with power.

“Drying your hair doesn’t work too well without power,” she told the New York Times. “I’m tired of cold food, but there’s nothing you can do but deal with it.”

PG&E has been roundly criticized for how it has dealt with wildfires. An old electrical tower sparked last year’s Camp Fire, for instance, a blaze that ultimately killed 85 people. The company declared bankruptcy this year — but executives were caught wining and dining top customers earlier this month just as it shut down power to millions of residents. PG&E has warned it may have to again cut the power of millions of people this weekend because Northern California is expected to experience dry and windy conditions ripe for producing fires.

READ: PG&E execs were literally partying in wine country while planning to cut power to millions of Californians

In Southern California’s Los Angeles County, meanwhile, some 40,000 people were forced to evacuate as the Tick Fire burned 3,950 acres through Thursday. It’s possible the area would also see large power blackouts — Southern California Edison noted it was considering cutting power to nearly 400,000 customers.

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“We cannot let our guard down,” Kathryn Barger, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said at a press conference. “We’re going to fight this aggressively.”

There was lots of work to be done to stop both the Tick Fire and Kincade Fire a few hundred miles to the north. Both fires were estimated to be at just 5% containment on Friday. The L.A. County Fire Department estimated some 10,000 structures were threatened by the Tick Fire. The Kincade had already destroyed 49 structures or homes and blazed through some 16,000 acres of land.

Cover: Vines surround a burning building as the Kincade Fire burns through the Jimtown community of unincorporated Sonoma County, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)