![]() Nor could he see the flaming remnants of homes and trees hurtling downward like firebombs, smashing onto roofs and igniting dozens of houses. Knapp couldn’t possibly have seen that happening it was tens of thousands of feet above him. That’s about when flaming debris that had been sucked into the Carr Fire’s plume of smoke drifted out of the updraft column into what fire meteorologists call the fallout zone, which is exactly what it sounds like. One of the 25-ton vehicles got spun around and dropped on top of a truck driven by a retired police officer, who then jumped out and crouched behind the bulldozer’s blade while his truck caught fire. Three other CalFire workers were driving bulldozers on that same boulevard when their windows also shattered. Stoke radioed Mayday moments before the tornado lifted his 5,000-pound Ford F-150 off the asphalt and flipped it repeatedly down Buenaventura Boulevard, killing him. Close by, a 37-year-old fire inspector named J. Not far from where Knapp stood, CalFire captain Shawn Raley was evacuating a woman and her daughter in his truck when all the windows imploded, showering them with shattered glass. While Knapp blithely sprayed water around Derksen’s house, that fire tornado-hidden from him by all the smoke in the air-leaped across the Sacramento River, touched down in Land Park, snapped high-tension power lines, uprooted trees, wrapped steel pipes around utility poles, and obliterated hundreds of homes, igniting and shredding them and hurling their burning debris up to altitudes at which commercial passenger jets fly. Early on that particular morning, the fire had crested a rise above Redding and, with a northwesterly breeze at its back, crawled downhill toward town.Įven as Knapp cranked the spigot, the swirling smoke he’d seen was fast accelerating, transforming much of the Carr Fire’s enormous lower plume into the biggest fire tornado ever observed, a whirling vortex of flame 17,000 feet tall and rotating at 143 mph with the destructive force of an EF-3 tornado, the kind that erases entire towns in Oklahoma. The Carr Fire was also typical in that it moved according to the dictates of wind, ground slope, and flammable fuels-southeast around a lake, then up a hill, in part because heat rises. Like the vast majority of wildfires, this one, called the Carr Fire, burned initially as a wide but shallow band of flames advancing slowly, like a battalion of infantrymen marching shoulder to shoulder, and left behind charred grass and lightly scorched trees. He was well aware that, three days earlier, in coastal mountains west of town, a wildfire had started when a trailer got a flat tire and the metal wheel rim scraped the asphalt, sending sparks into dry brush. Slender and fair-skinned with a gentle smile, Knapp is a research ecologist for the US Forest Service. After work, he planned to meet his wife and 3-year-old daughter, and some family friends, for dinner. On the windy, hot day of July 26, 2018, as record 113-degree temperatures baked Redding, California, in the northern Sacramento Valley, Eric Knapp toiled in an air-conditioned government office. Public Safety Power Shut Off ke.ca.This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Continually improving all of our services and operations.Utilizing and improving the dedication and skills of our people.Meeting the service requirements of our community in fire prevention, fire.The Sebastopol Fire Department's mission is to be a leading emergency service organization by: Reduce the risk to home and property becoming fuel for a wildfireĬalFire Homeowners check list to make your home fire safe Ready Set Go! Your personal wildfire action plan Resources for Flood and Earthquake Information State of California - Department of Insurance Sonoma County Late February 2019 Storm & Flood EOC AAF Final 15JULY2019Ĭommercial Property Owners Guide to Earthquake Safety Sonoma County A & W Tests After Action Report 100418 Sonoma County 2019 Power Shutoffs AAR Final Sonoma County 2019 Kincade Fire AAR Final Sonoma County 2017 Wildfires EOC AAR Final CORRECTED 6JUN2018 ![]()
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