LATIMES.COM S A
CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES
ery efforts.”
In Ventura County on Fri-
day, the water dropping air-
craft pounded the Maria fire
as anxious residents fled
their homes.
In one Santa Paula
neighborhood, a man stood
on his roof spraying his
home with water from a gar-
den hose as police and fire
officials urged residents to
evacuate. Others covered
their mouths and noses as
they fled to avoid thick
smoke that choked the
neighborhood.
“They’re on top of this,”
said resident Elizabeth
Sylvester. “They’re doingthe best they can. I’m
scared. This isn’t the first
time we’ve been through
this.”
Residents in Anacapa
Mobile Park raced to fill
their cars with anything that
fit as flames licked the hill-
side nearby. People carried
suitcases, garbage bags and
boxes filled with blankets,
clothes and food as firefight-
ers and police scurried from
door to door telling people to
evacuate.
Winneke Knuppel, who
has lived in the mobile home
park for 22 years, took down
a slew of wind chimes on her
property as she kept an eyeout for her cat, Geronimo.
“I can’t leave until my cat
comes back,” she said. “I
can’t find him. I’m really
anxious. I’m staying as long
as I can.”
As the gusts began to
pick up Friday morning,
dozens of fire vehicles staged
around homes along the
rolling hillsides of West La
Loma Avenue prepared to
protect the properties from
possible flare-ups.
Agricultural employees
wearing masks worked
nearby in citrus groves.
Michael Minjares, who
works in the agricultural in-
dustry, said he stopped hiscar to see how close the fire
was to thousands of avocado
trees near Briggs and Pink-
erton roads early Friday. He
worried that the winds and
fire will decimate next year’s
crop.
“That’s a lot of avocados.
That’s a concern,” he said.
“You have crops in the hills
on fire. Crop insurance is im-
portant.”
Minjares said the area
on fire now is the only spot
not torched by the Thomas
fire.
“It’s makes you leery
when thinking about it,” he
said as three planes and two
helicopters circled above.Saticoy. Then Friday the fire headed north and charged down the other side of the mountain toward Santa Paula.
Marcus YamLos Angeles Timescluding solar-run devices for
charging telephones and lis-
tening to the radio. Cities
opened charging stations,
and food trucks offered hot
meals.
Having to endure cold
showers and no lights also
paled in comparison with
the fact that people in So-
noma County were losing
their homes to fire.
“Maybe they should shut
it off if it prevents catastro-
phes,” said Dave Mc-
Caughey, 63, an East Bay
contractor.
But the shutdown did not
prevent fire in the East Bay.
During a fierce wind-
storm that toppled mature
trees on Sunday and littered
freeways with branches,
fires ignited in various Con-
tra Costa County communi-
ties, forcing evacuations.
One of the fires, which de-
stroyed a swim and tennis
club in Lafayette, appeared
to have been started by a
downed Pacific Gas & Elec-
tric Co. line that the utility
did not power off. The So-
noma fire also may have
been ignited by a PG&E
transmission line that was
still powered up.
Ron Del Favero, 49, a
salesman who lives in Wal-
nut Creek, was one of many
East Bay residents who pre-
pared “go” bags on Sunday,
filled with important items
such as passports and birth
certificates, photographs,
jewelry, hard drives, wills
and things of sentimental
value, to enable a hasty exit
in an evacuation.
Del Favero and his family
live only a couple of miles
from where the Lafayette
fire burned. “It was very
scary,” he said.
The hardest hit were
small businesses that had to
close, hourly workers who
did not get paid and people
with medical needs who re-
quire electricity.
Leda Ciraolo, 56, a retired
professor, awoke in the dark-
ness early Monday to find
her home in Orinda filled
with smoke from the fires.
“I had trouble breath-
ing,” she said.
She suffers from respira-
tory ailments, and her air fil-
ters did not work without
power. On Monday, with her
car packed with photo-
graphs, documents and her
hard drive, she went to the
city’s charging station to try
to book a hotel with power.
“Put out the word,” she
said. “PG&E has put us
through hell.”
Ciraolo and many others
also did not have cell service
during the outage and could
not receive alerts.
Trish Devine, 69, a Mor-
aga resident, was awakened
by noise during the first
power shutdown and
opened her front door. She
saw flames. Without cell cov-
erage, she had not received
any warnings.
She and her husband got
into their car with their dogs
and left until the fire, appar-
ently started by a vape pen,
was extinguished.
Joan Weil, another Mor-
aga resident, said the shut-
offs make her anxious be-
cause “of the lack of control.”
Residents have learned
that police alerts about the
timing of the outages are at
best rough estimates. The
power could go off before the
specified time or many
hours later. Residents also
have learned to be leery of
PG&E notices that say their
addresses will not be af-
fected by shutdowns. Many
who were told they would
suffer no impact lost power.
Before the shutdowns,
said Weil, a retired teacherand administrator, she vac-
uums her house, does all the
laundry, runs the dish-
washer and prepares meals
that can be eaten cold. Her
son-in-law bought her and
her husband a generator for
the second outage.
Generators can keep vi-
tal appliances running with
extension cords, but do not
by themselves power up en-
tire houses. Even with a gen-
erator, people could not
watch television because ca-
ble services did not work.
Weil, whose home has so-
lar, said she and her hus-
band plan to invest in solar
batteries, which can power a
home during an outage.
Without such a way to store
power, homes with solar
panels go dark just like oth-
ers when the grid is shut off.
She suffers from non-
smoker’s lung cancer and
needs fresh air. She said her
husband rigged up the gen-
erator to power air filters in
her bedroom.
Susan Green, 71, a retired
administrator, also had a
generator in the Lafayette
house where she is staying
with her son and grandchil-
dren for a few months. She
said it stopped working half
an hour after her son left the
house for an outing with his
kids on Sunday,
He called her and tried to
instruct her on how to re-
start it. After he directed her
to “choke” something, she
said, she stopped listening.
“It isn’t worth it because of
the complications and the
noise,” she said.
Grocery stores that
stayed open with generators
had almost no customers.
People hunkered down at
home. Once power was re-
stored, the stores were in-
stantly mobbed.
People with gas stoves
could cook on them, but no
one could barbecue because
of the red-flag fire alert.
Most gyms shut down, and
hiking trails also were closed
because of the fire danger.
Jim Davis, 56, a retired
business consultant, went to
the Sierra Foothills town of
Arnold for the weekend. But
his second home there lost
power, and he returned to
the Bay Area. He said he
tried to buy a generator for
his Lafayette home, but they
were sold out last weekend.
He plans to try again Friday.
He lives alone and
doesn’t keep much food in
his refrigerator, but he needs
power to keep his fish alive in
an aquarium.
Over a ham-and-cheese
sandwich at a bagel store in
Lafayette, Davis contem-
plated the power shut-offs.
“Are blackouts a reason-
able price to pay for a reduc-
tion in the risk of a fire?” he
asked. “I bet you the answer
is ‘of course not.’ ”
PG&E is trying to protect
itself from liability for start-
ing fires, he said. “Why are
they justified this year but
not last year?” he asked.
“The inherent risks haven’t
changed.”
He said the shutdowns
cost the local economy bil-
lions of dollars. If 100 homes
each valued at $1 million
burned, the cost to replace
them would be less, he said.
“But loss of life is different.”
Once the winds have died
down, PG&E must inspect
the lines for damage before
restoring power. Local law
enforcement agencies send
more texts and emails advis-
ing residents that the proc-
ess has begun.
In an email Wednesday,
Moraga police advised that
power was back on.
The “Public Safety Power
Shutoff is Over ... for now,”
the department said.POLICEofficers patrol a street in Oakland’s Mont-
clair Village shopping center during a power outage.Ray ChavezAssociated PressAdjusting to a
new routine in
the Bay Area
[Outages,from A1]battling the Maria fire
OXNARD RESIDENTS watch the flames from a cul-de-sac near the 126 Freeway on Thursday night. About
8,000 residents of the area have been evacuated, and thousands of structures are threatened.Robert GauthierLos Angeles Times