Wildfires' wake: Tracking progress, pain 6 months later

Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

A woman takes a moment in the Coffey Park neighborhood, Wednesday, March 28, 2018, in Santa Rosa, Calif. The neighborhood was devastated by the Tubbs Fire.

Where things stand 6 months later

Cause of the fires

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Cal Fire, has not yet named a cause for any of the October fires. The California Public Utilities Commission is looking into whether Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s field equipment — power lines, poles, transformers and other gear — may have played a role in the blazes.

About 150 lawsuits have been filed blaming PG&E for the flames, including suits by Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties. PG&E has suggested that the massive Tubbs Fire may have been started by another party’s power line on private property near Calistoga. So far, no evidence has surfaced in public indicating that arson or out-of-control campfires started the blazes.

— David R. Baker

Emergency alerts

State officials found that Sonoma County emergency managers were not prepared to properly warn residents, leaving many in the dark about imminent fire danger. The county declined to send a Wireless Emergency Alert to cell phones in the region, fearing creating a panic.

In the months since, the Federal Communications Commission has adopted long-stalled upgrades to the WEA system that should boost the alerts’ effectiveness and allow agencies to better target specific areas. Several North Bay lawmakers have introduced a bill requiring all counties in the state to create uniform emergency notification protocols and develop guidelines for using WEAs.

— Joaquin Palomino

Mutual aid

After the fires broke out, commanders in North Bay counties requested help from nearby fire departments through the state’s mutual aid system, which is critical in large-scale disasters. Those calls went largely unanswered, underlining long-held concerns by fire officials around the state about growing strains on the mutual aid system. California fire officials have asked for $100 million to improve the system.

— Joaquin Palomino

Regulatory changes

Since the fires, the California Public Utilities Commission has approved tougher fire safety rules for electric utilities. The rules, which had been in development for nearly a decade, require the companies to keep tree branches trimmed farther back from power lines and to prioritize repair work in high-risk areas.

The commission has yet to settle the question of whether utilities can be held liable for wildfire damage even if they have followed all state safety rules to the letter. PG&E and the state’s other utilities are lobbying in Sacramento to be exempted from so-called “inverse condemnation” liability.

— David R. Baker

Actions by PG&E

In response to the fires, PG&E launched its largest disaster-response operation since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, mobilizing 4,300 workers to restore electricity and natural gas service. The company has spent $219 million replacing more than 160 miles of power lines and 2,800 poles.

PG&E also has taken preemptive steps to help prevent future wildfires. The utility says it will turn off power lines at times of extreme fire danger and will change the way it uses automated devices called reclosers that try to restart power lines that have unexpectedly switched off. At times of high fire threat, it will reprogram reclosers to avoid sending electricity through a downed line. It also plans to replace many wooden poles in high-risk areas with steel poles.

In addition, PG&E is creating a Wildfire Safety Operations Center in San Francisco to monitor the weather for conditions that could start fires and coordinating its response when a fire erupts. PG&E also will add several hundred weather stations to its existing network of 100 and will contract with private firefighting services to provide emergency aid.

— David R. Baker

Claims for losses

Homeowners and renters in Sonoma County have filed 14,692 residential insurance claims totaling $6.9 billion. Of those, 4,821 claims were for total losses, according to the California Department of Insurance. In addition, insurers received 1,772 commercial property claims totaling $781 million. Of those, 153 were for total losses. Total insured losses, including residential, commercial, auto and other lines, amounted to nearly $8 billion in Sonoma County.

— Kathleen Pender

Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

From left: Pedro Alvarez and Martin Tut work on a new home at 1646 Astaire Ct. in the Coffey Park neighborhood, Wednesday, March 14, 2018, in Santa Rosa, Calif. The neighborhood was destroyed during the Tubbs Fire.

Home prices

The median price paid for a home or condo in Sonoma County was $519,000 in February, down sharply from $571,500 in September, according to CoreLogic. By comparison, the median sale price for the nine-county Bay Area rose slightly, to $750,000 from $745,750. CoreLogic analyst Andrew Lepage noted, however, that month-to-month medians can be skewed by seasonal factors and changes in the mix of homes sold. The median price for a Sonoma County home or condo sold in January, for instance, was $566,000.

Zillow’s Home Price Index estimates a median value for all homes in a region, not just those that sold in a particular month. By this measure, the median home value for Sonoma County rose to $643,500 in February from $614,200 in September, a 4.8 percent increase. By comparison, the index for the San Francisco metro area rose 5.6 percent.

— Kathleen Pender

Rents

Rents have increased much faster in Sonoma County than in other parts of the Bay Area since the fires, according to two sources of rental data.

According to Zillow, the median asking rent for units in Sonoma County rose to $2,746 per month in February from $2,651 in September, up 3.6 percent. By comparison, rents in the San Francisco metro area rose to $3,412, but up just 0.9 percent. According to RealPage, which surveys apartment complexes with five units or more, the average rent in Sonoma County rose to $2,127 in February from $2,028 in September, a 4.9 percent increase. Average rents over the same period increased by 0.4 percent in the San Francisco metro area.

— Kathleen Pender

Lot prices

Since the beginning of November, 302 fire lots in Sonoma County have come on the market, according to Rick Laws, a senior vice president with Pacific Union International in Santa Rosa. Of those, 118 have been sold. The rest are either under contract, still on the market or withdrawn.

The median price paid over the past 12 weeks was $243,000, but prices vary widely depending on location and buildability, Laws said. In the Tubbs Fire west of Highway 101, prices for sold lots ranged from $30,000 to $250,000. In the Tubbs Fire area east of 101, they ranged from $125,000 to $6.6 million.

— Kathleen Pender

Wine industry

Although October’s wildfires burned through some of California’s most venerated wine regions, the overall impact to the local wine industry was small. When the fires hit, the grape harvest was more than 90 percent complete in Napa and Sonoma counties. Of the roughly 140,000 vineyard acres in the North Coast American Viticultural Area (encompassing Napa, Sonoma, Lake, Marin, Mendocino and Solano counties), 267 were affected by fire, according to a study by the Wine Business Institute at Sonoma State University.

Of 1,025 wineries in the North Coast, 75 reported some structural damage. Just 10 percent of wineries or grape growers will be replanting portions of their vineyards due to fire. From a quality perspective, the fires should not affect the overall character of the wines produced in the 2017 vintage.

— Esther Mobley

Tourism

Hotel occupancy numbers in Napa and Sonoma counties saw an uptick the past several months over the same time last year, experiencing as much as a 17.6 percent jump. Much of that increase, though, say officials with Sonoma County Tourism, likely is due to “second responders” related to the fire aftermath, including cleanup and construction workers, government officials and insurance adjusters.

Officials with Visit Napa reported that occupancy in December and January rose 6.8 percent and 4 percent, respectively, over a year earlier. In Sonoma, occupancy rose 12.9 percent and 17.6 percent in December and January, respectively, over those months a year before.

A Sonoma State University survey said 71 percent of North Bay area wineries experienced an immediate drop in tasting room visits, and 62 percent reported lower tasting room sales compared with the same period in the previous year.

— Spud Hilton and Esther Mobley

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