RETURNING TO THE UNKNOWN
Some evacuees being housed at a Sonoma raceway hoped to return home.
Retiree Stephen Garner, 68, of Sonoma, has been camped with his wife in the couple's recreational vehicle.
"As far as we know our house is OK, but that's the hard part, you don't know,” he said.
In Redwood Valley, a scorched Mendocino County town of about 1,700 people, Jami Flores and her family sifted through the ruins of their two-story rental home, which was reduced to rubble.
"There's been a lot of crying and a lot of emotions," Flores, 42, said.
Flores, her husband and daughter fled Monday morning after being awoken by the smell of smoke, not uncommon in the area. Seeing a red haze, they rushed to leave amid falling ash and arriving firefighters.
"The mountain was on fire," Flores said. Now she wonders, "Where do we all go next?"
The fast-moving fires north of San Francisco remained a danger, with thousands ordered to leave their homes at the weekend.
Firefighters gained control of two of the deadliest fires in wine country's Napa and Sonoma counties: The Tubbs fire was 60 percent contained and the Atlas fire 65 percent contained, Cal Fire said. Nearly half of the Redwood Valley fire, which alone is responsible for eight deaths in Mendocino County, was extinguished by late Sunday.
The 40 confirmed fatalities make the fires California's deadliest since record-keeping began, surpassing the 29 deaths from the Griffith Park fire of 1933 in Los Angeles.
About 75,000 people remain displaced.
At least a dozen Napa Valley and Sonoma County wineries were damaged or destroyed, throwing the state's wine industry and related tourism into disarray.
Firefighters from Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and New York are helping battle the blazes. Cal Fire estimated the fires would be contained by Friday.
The year's wildfire season is one of the worst in U.S. history, with nearly 8.6 million acres (3.4 million hectares) burned by Oct. 13, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The worst on record for the same period in a year was 9.3 million acres in 2015.
