Foothill Regional Park
MARY CALLAHAN, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | November 9, 2019
Flames were sweeping down the grassy slopes of Foothill Regional Park toward the near-empty town of Windsor when Sonoma County Fire District Battalion Chief Mike Elson drove up Cayetano Court and realized the moment they had all been bracing for had come.
Two-story flames and glowing firebrands whirled through the smoke-darkened skies, setting fences and trees ablaze, lighting landscaping and, soon, sparking fires at several homes in the neighborhood, as well.
The marauding Kincade fire had been bearing down on Windsor all morning, burning its way through a rural landscape across a wide area north of town, where an army of firefighting forces stood ready to face it late in the morning of Oct. 27.
But it would be northeast Windsor, in and around hundreds of homes in the Foothill Oaks Estates, where they confronted the biggest threat — a near-overwhelming battle to keep the blaze from taking the neighborhood and the town.
Scores of firefighters took part in the initial attack, making a stand amid the chaos, barely daring to hope they would prevent the fire from ripping through town, let alone sweeping across Highway 101 and burning a trail of destruction all the way to the coast.
“That fire coming off of Foothill Park, that fire was coming off that hill very quickly, and it was massive,” said Elson, who was leading a nine-engine task force but eventually took command of the Foothills campaign. “It was a massive firefight. There were flames up over the tops of houses ... and those are mostly two-story houses, so they were 30, 40 feet in the air.”
But in what became a pivotal juncture in the two-week effort to beat back Sonoma County’s largest wildfire ever, the battle for Windsor spared every single home in the town of 27,000 people and substantially curbed the fire’s spread. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE
Flames were sweeping down the grassy slopes of Foothill Regional Park toward the near-empty town of Windsor when Sonoma County Fire District Battalion Chief Mike Elson drove up Cayetano Court and realized the moment they had all been bracing for had come.
Two-story flames and glowing firebrands whirled through the smoke-darkened skies, setting fences and trees ablaze, lighting landscaping and, soon, sparking fires at several homes in the neighborhood, as well.
The marauding Kincade fire had been bearing down on Windsor all morning, burning its way through a rural landscape across a wide area north of town, where an army of firefighting forces stood ready to face it late in the morning of Oct. 27.
But it would be northeast Windsor, in and around hundreds of homes in the Foothill Oaks Estates, where they confronted the biggest threat — a near-overwhelming battle to keep the blaze from taking the neighborhood and the town.
Scores of firefighters took part in the initial attack, making a stand amid the chaos, barely daring to hope they would prevent the fire from ripping through town, let alone sweeping across Highway 101 and burning a trail of destruction all the way to the coast.
“That fire coming off of Foothill Park, that fire was coming off that hill very quickly, and it was massive,” said Elson, who was leading a nine-engine task force but eventually took command of the Foothills campaign. “It was a massive firefight. There were flames up over the tops of houses ... and those are mostly two-story houses, so they were 30, 40 feet in the air.”
But in what became a pivotal juncture in the two-week effort to beat back Sonoma County’s largest wildfire ever, the battle for Windsor spared every single home in the town of 27,000 people and substantially curbed the fire’s spread. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE
April 21, 2021
READ THE ARTICLE IN Santa Rosa Press Democrat
The Weather Channel, May 7, 2021
