Wildfires fanned by strong winds swept through northern California's wine country last night, killing at least 11 people, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses, and forcing about 20,000 people to flee.
The deaths brought the official wildfire-related toll in California this year to 14, the greatest loss of civilian life from a single cluster of blazes in the state in a decade, state fire officials said.
Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for Napa, Sonoma and Yuba counties, encompassing some of the state's prime wine-making areas, as the blazes raged unchecked and engulfed the region in thick, billowing smoke that drifted south into the San Francisco Bay area.
He later extended the declaration to include four more northern California counties and Orange County in Southern California, and requested a US presidential disaster declaration to support state and local firefighting resources.
Sonoma County bore the brunt of the fatalities, with seven fire-related deaths confirmed there, according to the sheriff's department.
Two people died in Napa County and one in Mendocino County, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).
Details of those deaths were not immediately available from state or local officials. But KGO-TV in San Francisco, citing unnamed California Highway Patrol sources, described one victim as a blind, elderly woman found in the driveway of her home in Santa Rosa, a town in Sonoma County.
The death toll could climb higher, said Brad Alexander, a spokesman for the governor's Office of Emergency Services.
More than 100 people were treated for fire-related injuries such as burns and smoke inhalation, CNN reported.
Yesterday, thousands of firefighters battled wind gusts in excess of 80km/h that have rapidly spread 15 separate wildfires across about 73,000 acres in northern California since erupting late on Sunday night, according to CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant.
About 1,500 homes and commercial buildings have been destroyed throughout the region, Ken Pimlott, director of CalFire, told reporters.
Two hospitals were forced to evacuate in Sonoma County, state officials said.
A separate wildfire yesterday torched at least a half-dozen homes in the affluent Anaheim Hills neighbourhood of Southern California's Orange County, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents, authorities said.
That blaze erupted along a freeway off-ramp and spread quickly in gusty winds to scorch about 5,000 acres in a matter of hours, fire officials said.
Footage from the wildfires in California and the devastation caused in the city of Santa Rosa pic.twitter.com/25JnDEdixE
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) October 10, 2017
Still, the situation there paled in comparison to one of the fiercer blazes in northern California, the so-called Tubbs fire, which charred about 27,000 acres in Napa and Sonoma counties, an area world-famous for its vineyards.
One evacuee, John Van Dyke, recalled standing in his pajamas near the 101 Freeway in Santa Rosa, watching a hillside inflames, when police pounded on his door in the mobile home park, telling him to flee.
"When I got in the car to leave, a whole section of the mobile park was in flames," he said. "It scared the hell out of me."
At least 5,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders in Santa Rosa alone, accounting for about a quarter of the region's residents displaced by fires.
San Francisco authorities issued an air quality alert due to smoke from the fires.
