Kincade fire is nearly double the size of San Francisco.
The fire raging in the heart of Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, doubled in size during a 24-hour period, destroying nearly 100 buildings and testing an estimated 3,400 firefighters, public safety officials said Sunday night.
The containment of the Kincade fire dropped from 10 percent to 5 percent from Saturday to Sunday night, according to Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency, which is expected to get a brief reprieve on Monday from high winds that have acted as a dangerous accelerant. More high winds are in the forecast Tuesday night into Wednesday.
The fire threatened 80,000 buildings across an expanding evacuation zone, which included a warning but not an order for part of neighboring Napa County.
Two firefighters sustained burns, one of whom was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center, the authorities said.
Power company braces 500,000 customers for next shutdown.
Pacific Gas and Electric officials said the power company notified 500,000 customers in Northern California on Sunday that they might have their power shut off on Tuesday, with much of the same footprint affected as this weekend’s shut-offs.
Some customers might not have their power restored before the next shut-off, said Andy Vesey, the chief executive of PG&E, who noted during a news conference Sunday night that public safety was paramount.
“We look for the highest risk zones where we have the potential for catastrophic wildfire,” Mr. Vesey said. “We will not roll the dice when it comes to public safety.”
Those potential shut-offs, which could affect 32 counties throughout the state, were announced within hours of the power cuts on Sunday that affected nearly 3 million people, the largest fire-prevention blackouts in California history.
The new round would be the fourth time this month that the company has intentionally turned off electricity to large numbers of customers, some of whom had power for only a few hours between earlier blackouts.
PG&E’s policy of pre-emptively cutting power in the hope of preventing its lines and equipment from causing fires — as has happened several times in recent years — has angered customers, regulators and politicians. Leaders in the Democratic-controlled State Senate have organized a panel to review PG&E’s actions.
Mr. Vesey said he had spoken to customers whose power had been shut off at a community resource center set up by the utility and acknowledged their discontent.
“You’re right — what we do is not popular,” Mr. Vesey said during a news conference on Sunday night. “I will not tell you that people congratulated us. People are angry.”
[ The New York Times has photographers on the ground, documenting the Kincade fire and the struggle to contain it. Follow their work here. ]
Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Ivan Penn and Lauren Hepler.