Auto Dismantler Donates Work To Wine Country Wildfire Victims
A Sonoma County man is making it his mission to remove cars burned in the wine country wildfires and get them to scrapyards.
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A Sonoma County man is making it his mission to remove cars burned in the wine country wildfires and get them to scrapyards.
Rumbling bulldozers and front-loaders have started scraping up the ash, charred wood and crumbled bricks and concrete left from thousands of homes and buildings destroyed by blazes in California wine country.
The fires are out, but misunderstandings about the extent of the damage has prompted an unprecedented slowdown in travel to wine country.
One month after the wine country wildfires devastated whole neighborhoods in Napa and Sonoma counties, homeowners who lost everything are faced with a tough choice: let the government clean their property or do it themselves.
A dozen plaintiffs filed a new lawsuit against PG&E in San Francisco on Friday, blaming the utility in the destructive Wine Country wildfires.
The most destructive wildfires in California's history killed 43 people and have left thousands of residents in the fire zone north of San Francisco scrambling for shelter.
The Sonoma County Assessor's Office will be sending teams of appraisers to burned areas of the county starting Monday to inspect fire-damaged properties.
Nearly a dozen agencies in Sonoma County are working to reduce the risk of flooding and pollution of drinking water by sediment and debris in the wake of the wildfires that devastated the county earlier this month.
Sonoma County health officials are concerned by the mosquito breeding threat posed by backyard pools in homes that were destroyed in this month's devastating wildfire outbreak.
The National Guard is scaling back its patrols in wine country, raising fears of more looting in the fire zones.
Thirteen schools are scheduled to reopen Friday and 11 more on Monday after fires in Sonoma County forced their closure for three weeks.
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Tuesday afternoon unanimously adopted emergency ordinances geared toward providing immediate and emergency housing for residents displaced by the wildfires in the county this month.
The top priority for Santa Rosa public schools, following the devastating wildfires, is decontamination.
The estimate of homes and structures destroyed was boosted from 6,900 late last week to 8,400 as officials neared completion of their damage assessment.
Most wine tasting rooms have reopened in Napa and Sonoma counties following the wildfires this month in the two counties.
"ICE attacked the Sheriff's Office in the midst of the largest natural disaster this county has even experienced," Sheriff Rob Giordano said.
More than 6,000 people in Sonoma County lost their homes and most are desperate to go back and sift through debris.
Firefighters continued to increase containment of the fires burning in Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties Thursday as officials raised the number of structures destroyed to nearly 7,000.
Cal Fire has created an interactive online map in which residents of Sonoma County can look up whether a structure has been damaged or destroyed in the wildfires.
Sonoma and Napa health officials are expressing concerns that all the ash from burned homes and cars have created a dangerous toxic mess that first responders and the communities will be dealing with for many years to come.
As the Wine Country wildfires wind down, officials in Sonoma County on Tuesday were planning out their recovery efforts.
Evacuations orders to four areas in Sonoma County have been lifted Monday evening, sheriff's officials said.
A week after the deadly Wine Country wildfires started, some residents were questioning why authorities in two of the counties hit hard by the fires opted not to send evacuation alerts to people's cell phones during the initial rapid spread.
Sonoma County sheriff Rob Giordano released body cam footage that shows a sheriff's deputy braving flames to rescue a disabled woman.
