Devastating footage has captured the exact moment California’s Kincade fire was sparked and it shows the flames turning into a blazing inferno in just a matter of minutes.
The clip begins with a bright white spot on the horizon shortly after 9:20pm on Wednesday.
It quickly grows before suddenly exploding into huge flames. The fire had devastated 10,000-acres by morning and has since gone on to destroy nearly 22,000 acres, according to officials.
Cameras from the University of Nevada and the University of Oregon are set up to help fire crews locate and respond to fires faster.
The flames appear to shoot up in the air after being fueled by winds of more than 70 miles per hour.
Fire crews are said to have carved containment lines around just five percent of the blaze’s perimeter since it erupted on Wednesday night.
Light breezes early on Friday helped firefighters make headway.
Devastating footage has captured the exact moment California’s Kincade fire was sparked and it shows the flames turning into a blazing inferno in just a matter of minutes
The clip begins with a bright white spot on the horizon shortly after 9:20pm on Wednesday. It quickly grows before suddenly exploding into huge flames
The fire had devastated 10,000-acres by morning and has since gone on to destroy nearly 22,000 acres, according to officials. Cameras from the University of Nevada and the University of Oregon are set up to help firecrews locate and respond to fires faster
The blaze has triggered the evacuation of about 2,000 people from the communities of Geyserville and Healdsburg, said Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Juan Valencia.
Geyserville and Healdsburg are hubs of upscale restaurants, wine-tasting rooms, inns and shops surrounded by hills dotted with vineyards about 75 miles north of San Francisco.
The cause of the Kincade Fire has not been determined, but California governor Gavin Newsom slammed Pacific Gas & Electric’s ‘years and years of greed’ on Friday after the utility company admitted its electrical equipment may have ignited the ruinous wildfire.
Newsom, who had earlier declared a state of emergency for Sonoma and Los Angeles counties, told a news conference: ‘We should not have to be here. Years and years of greed, years and years of mismanagement in the utilities, in particularly PG&E.
‘Greed has precipitated a lack of intentionality and focus and a hardening our grid, undegrounding their transmission lines.
‘They simply did not do their job. We will hold them accountable. This is not the new normal, this cannot continue.’
Local officials said it appears to have erupted near the base of a damaged high-voltage transmission tower owned by the bankrupt PG&E Corp.
PG&E said it didn’t de-energize a 230,000-volt transmission line near Geyserville that malfunctioned and finding a ‘broken jumper’ wire on a transmission tower around 9.20pm on Wednesday.
Seven minutes later, the so-called Kincade Fire erupted in Sonoma County, near the town of Geyserville, forcing about 2,000 evacuations, burning 49 structures and leaving huge swathes of the state without power.
Neither PG&E nor the commission could immediately determine whether the damaged tower or its malfunctioning transmission line ignited the blaze.
Crews have carved containment lines around just 5 percent of the fire’s perimeter since it erupted on Wednesday night, fueled by gale-force winds. But light breezes early on Friday helped firefighters make headway
The blaze has triggered the evacuation of about 2,000 people from the communities of Geyserville and Healdsburg, said Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Juan Valencia
The cause of the Kincade Fire has not been determined, but local officials said it appears to have erupted near the base of a damaged high-voltage transmission tower owned by the bankrupt PG&E Corp
PG&E CEO Bill Johnson said it was too soon to know if the faulty equipment started the fire. He said the tower had been inspected four times in the past two years and appeared to have been in ‘excellent condition’.
No injuries have been reported from the Kincade Fire.
Among those fleeing was 81-year-old Harry Bosworth, who awoke before sunrise Thursday to find a firetruck and firefighters in his driveway. As he and his wife drove off, flames surrounded their driveway and their barn caught fire.
‘I could see the fire coming, so we got the heck out of there,’ Bosworth said after escaping to his daughter’s house in the neighboring town of Healdsburg.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, at the scene of the Kincade fire on Friday in Geyserville
Tankers dropped fire retardant all afternoon on the Kincade Fire, Geyserville, in an effort to control the more than 10,000 acre fire spread
Howling winds that fueled destructive wildfires across California began to die down Friday, but residents in the northern part of the state braced for another round of power outages aimed at preventing what are expected to be the strongest gusts in years from sparking more blazes this weekend.
Fires have destroyed dozens of buildings in Northern California wine country and in subdivisions on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where flames shut down a freeway and smoke forced schools to close.
PG&E says up to 2.1 million people in Northern and Central California could lose power in the largest planned power shutoff in the region.