Despite a Red Flag Warning and smoky skies, activist collective Sonoma County Community Care gathered on Sunday, Aug. 23 at Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square to distribute thousands of vital supplies to the city’s unhoused population. The supplies, which included everything from tents to toiletries, were collected the previous weekend, but the initial distribution day was postponed due to extreme weather conditions that caused wildfires throughout Northern California.

Sonoma County Community Care is a group of 10 people who define the project as “a political activism collective dedicated to community care.” On the distribution day, the collective was supported by another 10 or 15 volunteers who organized the offerings by type around the Square. The vast majority of donations were clothing; however the group also received bedding and a tent, sanitary products, school supplies and food.

Leading up to the event, the collective posted a list of more than 30 different donation requests on Instagram and on printed posters around town.

Sal Alvarez says that the request list was compiled by the community.

“We went down to the river and to encampments and asked people what they wanted,” they said.

The number of donations overwhelmed and amazed the group, who spent many hours throughout the week sorting and organizing the supplies for the distribution day.

Still, demand for some items exceeded supply. Tents, tarps and other shelter materials went the fastest.

Alvarez estimates that by late afternoon as many as 75 people had come by for supplies.

“We literally only had two bags of food left, compared to the mountain that was there in the morning,” Alvarez said.

The collective say they were told that some disabled fire evacuees were in need of clothing. At around 4:30pm, volunteers drove two cars of unclaimed clothes to the fire evacuation center at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.

“We are working together with Transform Rohnert Park, Sonoma Acts of Kindness and some other organizations that do direct work with encampments, so we’re going to try to coordinate with them and other organizations to take whatever we have left straight to people that didn’t make it today,” Alvarez said.

“It’s always a bit nerve wracking organizing an event, especially so with the current fires and pandemic,” said Natalie Anderson. “This event reinforced the equal importance of a structured plan and a flexible ‘rolling with the punches’ attitude.”

Emma Hughes added, “One of my biggest takeaways was how taken aback people were that everything was free and that there were no strings attached, which demonstrates such a need for straight-up community building.”

Some residents near the LNU Lightning Complex fire have started to return home, but officials Sunday morning urged people to be ready to evacuate as Northern California braces for more dry winds and lightning in the evening.

The massive collection of fires in the North Bay grew to the second-largest in the state’s history over the weekend, burning 341,243 acres and affecting Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Yolo and Solano counties. As of Sunday afternoon, 845 structures, or buildings, have been destroyed and 231 have been damaged in the area, according to CalFire.

The blazes are 17 percent contained overall, but that progress could be compromised as the same types of storms that started those fires last weekend come back for a second round.

“Any lightning that comes through, based on the fact that we have so many resources that are affected and stretched thin throughout California, it’s going to likely result in additional fires,” Shana Jones, CalFire unit chief for Sonoma, Lake and Napa counties said in a briefing Sunday morning. “We do have a plan in order to immediately attack those fires, but it’s going to take some work.”

Local officials have developed an alarm, aptly named the “high-low” siren, which alternates between high and lower pitches to alert residents to leave the area. Emergency vehicles are equipped with the sirens, Jon Crawford, undersheriff for Napa County said.

“If you hear the high-low, it is time to go, would be our message,” Crawford said. “We’d also like to remind you that everyone has a sixth sense, and if you find yourself in a situation where you don’t feel safe … please understand that you’re empowered to make that decision to leave your property without being instructed to do so. You don’t have to wait for us.”

More resources are arriving from outside the state to battle back the growing blazes, according to Sean Kavanaugh, a CalFire incident commander. The state of Washington has sent 15 fire engines to California and Oregon officials have provided 25 engines to help crews fight the various fires and growing lightning fire complexes.

Even so, about 96 percent of the state’s fire engines are still working to stop the spread of the fires, leaving a small number of engines for other emergencies. So far, 1.3 million acres have burned across the state.

“We still have our everyday calls in every jurisdiction, it doesn’t matter if it’s CalFire or local city jurisdictions,” Kavanaugh said. “Even law enforcement, they still have the calls they have to answer every day and 9-1-1 calls have not stopped, so we’re very happy and thankful for those jurisdictions that are helping.”

In Napa and Lake County, the Hennesey fire is currently 287,811 acres and 17 percent contained as of Sunday morning. In Sonoma County the Walbridge fire, which has been merged with the Stewarts blaze west of Healdsburg is 51,072 acres and uncontained. The Meyers fire, north of Jenner, is 2,360 acres and 70 percent contained.

CalFire Chief Ben Nicholos said in a briefing sunday afternoon that the state agency hopes to fully contain the Meyers fire on Sunday night.

CalFire advises residents near the fires to pack belongings in advance and be prepared to leave, particularly as lightning strikes may cause new fires that could spread quickly in the next two days.

Stay up-to-date on evacuation orders for the LNU Lightning Complex by county on the CalFire website.

[10:30AM UPDATE: The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office has issued updated evacuation orders and warnings in areas north of Windsor threatened by the Walbridge Wildfire. Check the Sheriff’s Nixle Alert for more information.

Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit is streaming a briefing at 11am. We will update this article with more information based on the briefing.]

The North Bay fire complex enveloping hundreds of thousands of acres in three counties continued to grow on Friday night and is still largely uncontained, according to a 7:00am report by Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit.

The LNU Lightning Complex, which was caused by lightning on the morning of Monday, Aug. 17, has enveloped a total of 314,2017 acres and threatens an estimated 30,500 structures in Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties, according to the Cal Fire report.

The fire complex has killed four civilians, destroyed 560 structures and damaged 125 structures so far.

The Hennessey Fire, which represents multiple merged fires in Napa and Lake counties, currently encompasses 261,793 acres. The fire is 15 percent contained.

The Walbridge and Meyers fires in Sonoma County are smaller but less contained. The Walbridge Fire, located west of Healdsburg, covers 50,069 acres and is 0 percent contained, according to CalFire’s morning report. The Meyers Fire, located north of Jenner, is 2,345 acres in size and 0 percent contained.

In a separate morning briefing, Sonoma County’s Emergency Management Director Chris Godley reported that “The [Walbridge] fire behaved itself last night.”

High humidity over night helped to slow the fire’s growth overnight, Godley wrote. Although it did grow slightly on almost all sides, according to a map from the Sonoma County Water Agency, the fire did not move significantly in any one direction.

Numerous evacuation orders and warnings remain in effect in parts of the North Bay threatened by fire as of Saturday, Aug. 22.

Napa County’s fire map is available here. Sonoma County fire map is available here.

Weather Threats Predicted

The National Weather Service has announced a fire weather watch for much of the state beginning on 5am on Sunday, Aug. 23.

“There is potential for dry lightning,” Godley wrote of the National Weather Service warning. “Heavy gusty winds will exacerbate our fire conditions.”

Air Quality

Air quality levels remain unhealthy throughout much of the Bay Area due to heightened levels of fine particulate matter associated with wildfires.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) has reported unhealthy levels of smoke in the air throughout the week, especially in the East Bay and Santa Clara Valley, causing health officials to warn that exposure to wildfire smoke could weaken residents’ resistance to Covid-19.

Although BAAQMD is reporting relatively safe air quality levels through much of the North Bay, Sonoma County’s Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase told reporters in a press briefing on Friday afternoon that, after comparing data from several air quality data sources, she had concluded that levels have reached unsafe levels in parts of Sonoma County.

Mase said that air quality levels had reached 156 on the Air Quality Index (AQI) due to smoke from the wildfires.

Levels above 150 on the AQI are considered unhealthy for anyone. Under a state workplace safety rule passed in 2018, employers are required to offer employees working outside N95 masks when the AQI exceeds 150.

State agencies are working on distributing roughly one million N95 masks to farm workers through county Ag Commissioners, Cal OSHA announced in a press release on Thursday, Aug. 20.

2020, the metaphorical dumpster fire that it is, also happens to be a Census year. As a result, the Census Bureau has dispatched thousands of employees around the country to begin the second half of its once-in-a-decade count.

Armed with a phone app and trained to follow local and federal Covid-19 health guidelines, the Census takers are now visiting households which have not filled in Census questionnaires online, by phone or by letter, according to Joshua Green, a Census Bureau spokesperson.

When they visit a home, Census takers are trained to ask questions from a safe distance, ultimately inputting the information into a phone app.

Census data is used to redraw Congressional districts and calculate the amount of funding local government agencies receive from numerous federal and state programs. The data, which is meant to record every single person in the country, is also used by scholars to study and understand societal changes.

If you would not like a Census taker to come to your house, you may respond online, by mail or by phone, Green says.

In addition to being interrupted earlier in the year by the pandemic response, the Census has taken on a new level of controversy this year.

This week Los Angeles and San Jose joined other cities in a lawsuit against the Trump administration in response to its decision to advance the Census data collection deadline from Oct. 31 to Sept. 30. Others have voiced concern that fears among vulnerable communities that their information will be sent on to law enforcement agencies, including ICE, could dampen response rates in some communities.

In an interview on Thursday, Green dismissed both concerns. The Census Bureau is barred under federal law from sharing Census data with law enforcement, Green said.

As for the collection deadline, the Census Bureau’s deadline to submit completed data to President Donald Trump remains Dec. 31, and moving the collection deadline forward will allow the agency more time to prepare the collected data, Green said.

Despite all of the hurdles 2020 has presented, beginning with the pandemic and now continuing with widespread wildfires, it appears that California and three North Bay counties are on track to meet or surpass the 2010 self-reporting rates, according to the Census Bureau’s online self-reporting map.

As of Thursday, Aug. 20, Marin and Sonoma counties had already surpassed their 2010 rates—Marin was at 73.8 percent, 1.7 percent above its 2010 rate; and Sonoma County was at 67.4 percent, an impressive 10.1 percent above the county’s rate last time around. Napa County, meanwhile, was just 0.4 percent shy of its 2010 self-response rate as of Thursday, Aug. 20.

Statewide, the self-response rate is 66.1 percent as of Friday, Aug. 21, compared to 68.2 percent in 2010.

On Friday, the Associated Press reported on a watchdog agency’s report that raises further concerns about the Bureau’s ability to complete an accurate, full count due to a shortage of Census takers. Bureau officials have rejected those concerns as well.

What about the ongoing wildfires and resulting evacuation orders in parts of the state?

“Those who are concerned about their community being undercounted because of the fires should get out the message that no matter where a family or individual happens to be sleeping at any given time, anyone can self-respond to the census,” Green said.

“We want people to respond based on where they were living before the fire displaced them, not where they are temporarily living,” Green said, when asked what people displaced by the fires should do.

More information about the Census is available at 2020census.gov.

Federal, state and local self-response data is available here.