The Kincade Fire in California's Sonoma County has forced nearly 200,000 people to flee their homes. Here are the latest updates.

• The Kincade Fire ignited in Sonoma County, California, on October 23 and has burned 75,415 acres. It was 15% contained as of Tuesday morning.

• The fire forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate their homes as powerful winds enabled it to spread quickly over the weekend.

• The blaze has destroyed 124 structures, including 57 homes, and left 23 damaged. Two first responders have been injured.

• Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) told state regulators that a broken jumper cable on one of its transmission towers may have caused the fire.

• PG&E cut power for about 965,000 customers in its largest-ever blackout to reduce further wildfire risk. 

• As the climate warms, California’s wildfire season is getting longer, and weather conditions that bring a risk of wildfires are becoming more common.

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The Kincade Fire, which ignited in California’s Sonoma County on October 23, has torn through an estimated 75,415 acres — an area more than twice the size of San Francisco.

The blaze has forced about 180,000 people to flee, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, with mandatory evacuation orders spanning a large area from Mercuryville to Santa Rosa. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency on Sunday.

The blaze was 15% contained as of Tuesday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). The combination of powerful winds — gusts of up to 102 mph were recorded in the area over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) — and dry, hot weather conditions have enabled the flames to spread quickly.

So far, the blaze has destroyed 124 structures, including 57 homes, and left 23 damaged. Cal Fire reported that two first responders have been injured.

Utility company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) told regulators last week that the blaze may have been caused by a broken jumper cable on one of the company’s transmission towers. Sparking PG&E wires also started last year’s record-breaking Camp Fire, which razed more than 18,800 structures and killed 86 people in November.

Over the weekend, PG&E cut power to about 965,000 customers to reduce the risk of more fires — the company’s largest-ever intentional outage, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. That move, the third time PG&E has cut Californians’ power this month, was meant to minimize a risk that live wires could spark and start more fires. 

The fire may have started at one of PG&E’s transmission towers

Noah Berger / AP

In a preliminary report, PG&E said it learned of the issue with its broken cable at 9:20 p.m. local time on October 23, when it responded to a problem with a 230,000-volt line that forced a power outage. When PG&E crews arrived at the transmission tower, they found that Cal Fire had taped off an area at the tower’s base. Cal Fire personnel pointed out the broken jumper cable.

Last week, PG&E preemptively shut off power to hundreds of thousands of Californians in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, including Geyserville, where the Kincade Fire started. But the company opted to only make targeted power cuts in Sonoma and keep high-voltage lines running in order to continue providing power to other areas. The spark occurred at a tower that had been kept online.

Noah Berger/AP

On Friday, Gov. Newsom vowed to force PG&E to make improvements to minimize outages and avoid sparking cables in the future.  

“We should not have to be here — years and years of greed, years and years of mismanagement, particularly with the largest investor-owned utility in the state of California, PG&E,” he said, adding, “We will do everything in our power to restructure PG&E so it is a completely different entity when they get out of bankruptcy by June 30th of next year. We will hold them accountable for the business interruption and costs associated with these blackouts.”

Powerful winds have spread fires across California

Noah Berger/AP

Strong winds — called Santa Ana winds in southern California and Diablo winds in the north — have heightened fire risk across the state.

The gusts blow down from neighboring mountains toward the southern California coast during the fall and winter. They’re typically fiercest in the fall, before the first rains of the season arrive. 

Google Maps; Skye Gould/Business Insider

The Diablo winds contributed to the Kincade Fire’s rapid spread, according to AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.

“The wind almost always brings a great surge in temperature and dry air,” he said.

The connection between climate change and wildfires

Individual wildfires can’t be directly attributed to climate change, but accelerated warming increases their likelihood.

“Climate change, with rising temperatures and shifts in precipitation patterns, is amplifying the risk of wildfires and prolonging the season,” the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a July release.

That’s because warming leads winter snow to melt sooner, and hotter air sucks away the moisture from trees and soil, leading to dryer land. Decreased rainfall also makes for parched forests that are prone to burning.

Noah Berger/AP

That warming trend is especially apparent this year. July was the hottest month ever recorded, and 2019 overall is on pace to be the third-hottest on record globally, according to Climate Central. 

Large wildfires in the US now burn more than twice the area they did in 1970. A recent study found that the portion of California that burns from wildfires every year has increased more than five-fold since 1972. 

Nine of the 10 biggest fires in the state’s history have occurred since the year 2003.

Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

“No matter how hard we try, the fires are going to keep getting bigger, and the reason is really clear,” climatologist Park Williams told Columbia University’s Center for Climate and Life. “Climate is really running the show in terms of what burns.”

Wildfire season in the western US getting longer, too: The average wildfire season is 78 days longer there than it was 50 years ago, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. That too, is related to climate change, because dying trees and vegetation are drying out (and becoming more available to burn) earlier in the year.

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Noah Berger/AP

“We’re really seeing that window expanding, not only earlier into the spring but also later into the fall as things stay drier, longer,” Leah Quinn-Davidson, a fire adviser for Humboldt County, previously told Business Insider. “We are at the point where we are in a crisis.”

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