Crews gain upper hand on Point Fire in Sonoma County as utility crews fan out in burn zone

Ed Perotti, 91, and his son have remained in his Dry Creek Valley home since Sunday, when the Point Fire ignited northwest of Healdsburg and threatened to spread onto the property.

Perotti, his son, Bruce Perotti, 67, and many other family members were prepping for a Father’s Day dinner when it became clear that a wildfire was raging just a short distance from the house in the 8100 block of West Dry Creek Road.

The now-1,207-acre Point Fire was not unlike multiple other fires the family has experienced in the area, Bruce Perotti said. One in 1972 claimed several nearby homes.

As they braced for the approaching flames Sunday, Bruce Perotti used a sprayer at one point to water down some flames that came close. Eventually, though, it was clear to much of the family that it was time to leave. Except Ed Perotti was obstinate.

“This is my home,” Ed Perotti said Tuesday to a Press Democrat reporter. “My wife died here. And I figured, if it’s my time to go, I’ll be here with her.”

The Perottis were two of just over 300 residents who were ordered to evacuate the area Sunday when winds whipped up the fire to over 1,000 acres in a matter of about seven hours.

Two days later, the priority has shifted to strengthening containment of the blaze, which stood at 40% Tuesday, and getting residents home, local officials said.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore said that the focus for the next few days would be repopulating the evacuated area, though Cal Fire said none would occur Tuesday night.

“When somebody is on their property looking out for spot fires or other things like that, it’s better than nobody being there,” Gore said at the scene. “But it has to be safe.”

He also indicated that repopulation would help people to guard properties from theft, which was a problem following the 2017 Tubbs Fire.

The Point Fire has made for an abrupt and somewhat alarming June start to the North Bay’s wildfire season.

Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit, which also covers Colusa, Solano and Yolo counties, has now seen two and half times more acreage burn in the past three days than in the past three years combined, when the region got a break from major wildfires after consecutive years of catastrophic fire.

The Point Fire has been dwarfed by the Sites Fire, which started Monday afternoon near East Park Reservoir, southeast of Stonyford and reached 15,565 acres by Tuesday evening.

A total 16,772 acres have thus burned since Sunday in the region, compared to 4,442 acres from 2021 to 2023, Cal Fire said.

Firefighters working in favorable weather conditions on the Point Fire reinforced containment lines along both western and eastern flanks of the blaze, local Cal Fire spokesman Jason Clay said.

“The big focus had been getting containment on the west flank, opposite of West Dry Creek Road,” Clay said, adding that hand crews were working to tie up containment lines in rugged areas along that edge, which is inaccessible to bulldozers. Crews also worked to shore up lines on the fire’s eastern edge paralleling West Dry Creek Road, where homes had been threatened and at least two homes were lost.

A priority was mop up inside the perimeter to create buffers at least 100 yards deep inside containment lines, dousing flames and removing of hazard tree snags or other debris that could roll down hill or carry fire outside the lines, Clay said.

In the meantime, a shift to onshore winds was underway, bringing much higher moisture levels that would work their way inland overnight and Wednesday morning, National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Merchant said.

“That’s a pretty good trend with respect to the fire itself,” said Merchant, noting relative humidity in the vicinity of the Point Fire would rise from the teens to around 30% by Wednesday afternoon.

About 1,700 personnel were assigned by late Tuesday to the Point Fire and the larger, more active Sites Fire in Colusa County. The Point Fire had the bulk, 1,153 personnel, on Tuesday.

Clay said resources would be rotating off the Point Fire where possible and onto the Sites, which was 15% contained Tuesday.

In addition to the two homes lost in the Point Fire, some vines at Bella Vineyards & Wine Caves, the vineyard closest to flames, were damaged, said Lauren Fremont, executive director of Winegrowers of Dry Creek Valley. Other vines, not attached to a winery, on the mountain slope north of West Dry Creek Road, also were burned.

But damage in the area remains minimal, thanks to the efforts of fire crews and a change in the winds overnight Sunday.

“It could have been a very different story for certainly the north part of Dry Creek Valley,” Fremont said.

In the heat of Tuesday afternoon, Cal Fire personnel used pickaxes and hoses to extinguish dwindling flames that had appeared just feet away from the Raymond Burr Vineyards tasting room off West Dry Creek Road.

Vineyard owner Don Johnson had returned to his property Tuesday to tend to farm animals, which included "lots of lambs, none roasted," he said.

"They saved our a---s," Johnson said of Cal Fire crews. He said he did not think about wildfires when he bought the property six years ago; however, he's already witnessed two of them creep up the forested hillside where his winery is nestled.

Just to the north, over on Brown Road, a small lane off West Dry Creek, Cal Fire Captain Patrick Mills led crews who were monitoring the smoldering, charred land behind a large brick-red house, not far from where a shed full of cars had been ravaged by fire.

"Everything could look fine right now, and then a breeze kicks up, or humidity goes down, temperature increases, and little stuff starts popping up, so we got to keep checking on it," he said.

“It's so early in the season, I hope it's not a sign of what's to come."

The majority of wineries reopened tasting rooms Tuesday after shutting them down a day earlier, due to smoke. The sky in the area was clear with the exception of a few hot spots “peppered in the north” part of the valley, Fremont said.

Near the containment lines close to West Dry Creek Road, firefighters monitored the area and waited in case they needed to spring into action to protect the homes nearby.

As they monitored, Pedro Bensin, 32, raked dry grasses into a wheelbarrow to protect his parents’ property on Yoakim Bridge Road. The property was within the evacuation zone.

His father, Rob Bensin, 80, said they decided to stay despite the wildfire’s threat because they have seven cats. “But we were ready to go,” he said.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. crews were allowed to enter the fire zone to evaluate “dozens” of power poles in the area and the distribution line de-energized about 5:11 p.m. Sunday, per Cal Fire’s request. The utility was awaiting word from Cal Fire that it was safe to re-energize the line.

Just over 440 customers were still without power Tuesday as a result, with no estimated time of restoration. The evaluation should help crews to determine what repairs, if any, were needed and about when power can be turned back on, PG&E spokeswoman Megan McFarland said.

Sonoma County Sheriff Eddie Engram also activated the county’s Agricultural Access Verification program for the evacuated 2E2 zone, a day after he said it was too dangerous for people to enter the area.

The passes allow agricultural property owners or full-time employees of a commercial operation to gain access to tend fields, vineyards and livestock during fires and other natural disasters.

The existing evacuation order and warning in the fire area were both unchanged at midday. The little-used temporary evacuation site at Laguna High School in Forestville closed at noon.

The Sites Fire in Colusa County contributed most of the smoke Tuesday affecting the North Bay, prompting a raft of health and air quality advisories.

Many portions of Napa County and the eastern half Sonoma County saw Air Quality Index levels between 100 and 150, meaning people in the general population could experience negative health effects after 24 hours of exposure. Some spots in Napa County and around the city of Sonoma had worse air quality that indicated a “health alert,” according to PurpleAir.

The shift to westerly winds Tuesday was expected to help drive at least some of the smoke out of the region, especially in Sonoma County.

But it doesn’t mean the region is out of fire danger, officials cautioned.

“We are into that time of year where we tend to be dry and if we get those gusty winds there is always the potential for a spark,” National Weather Service meteorologist Cindy Palmer said. “We aren’t looking at conditions where we are expecting significant fire growth. However, we just ask people to remain vigilant.”

“It doesn’t take much for a fire to start and it doesn’t take much for fire to move through grasses either,” she added.

Staff writer Emma Muprhy contributed to this story.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan (she/her) at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @MaryCallahanB.

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