Thousands Forced to Flee as Wildfires Continue to Rage in California

The fires are among the most damaging in state history, killing at least 11 people, tearing through wine country and leveling entire neighborhoods.

Wind gusts of 50 miles an hour helped spread the flames across at least seven counties starting Sunday night, burning tens of thousands of acres. Winds calmed overnight, fire officials said. As the sun rose in California, fire officials said they hoped cooler temperatures would also aid efforts.

Separately, a wildfire in Southern California near Anaheim burned nine square miles, burned six homes and threatened thousands of homes.

According to fire officials, 17 blazes burned 100,000 acres across the state in 24 hours.

Local officials have said resources are being stretched thin despite help coming in from other cities and counties.

"When you have so many starts at once you have to make some pretty hard calls on prioritizing," Brad Alexander, chief of media relations at the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, said Tuesday morning.

Firefighters, he added, would focus first on areas where lives were being threatened or there was significant structure loss.

He said a blaze known as the Tubbs Fire in the counties of Sonoma and Napa is considered "one of the top priority fires in the state." It has burned 27,000 acres and destroyed more than 500 homes and a couple dozen nonresidential buildings.

In Sonoma County, roughly 5,000 people were staying in 28 shelters as of Tuesday morning, and more were being housed in Marin, as well, said Barry Dugan, a spokesman with the Sonoma County Emergency Operations Center. Officials there have received more than 100 calls about missing persons

"Evacuation orders are still in place," he said. "It's really devastating."

In the hard hit City of Santa Rosa, Sonoma's county seat, whole neighborhoods have burned and a smoky haze continued to obscure the sky Tuesday morning.

Mr. Alexander, with the state office of emergency services, said winds had died down some, but low humidity in the area remained a problem.

Local officials have told of sheriff's office deputies being pinned down in neighborhoods ablaze, and firefighters completely surrounded by flames as they worked.

Lucas Likes, 23 years old, evacuated around 1 a.m. Monday after a roommate roused him from sleep. When he went outside to turn on his car, Mr. Likes said, flames from the fire had illuminated his neighborhood in the Larkfield-Wikiup area, just outside the city, like "stadium lighting." Smoke was quick to follow.

"I grabbed the essentials: phone, wallet, car keys," he said, along with some water and a pocketknife and fled to stay with friends in an unburned area of Santa Rosa. Mr. Likes wasn't sure of the status of his home, but said he had heard news reports that make him think it is gone.

On Monday night, several hundred evacuees found themselves at a shelter set up at Santa Rosa's Finley Community Center, said Roy Pitts, a shelter manager with the Red Cross. Some came looking for a place to sleep, others came for a meal and supplies, like blankets and water.

Ruben Mondragon, 45, arrived at the shelter with his wife and dog after being told to evacuate his apartment on Simpson Street, near West 9th Street, on Santa Rosa's west side.

Mr. Mondragon said he was feeling "unsecure" and worried about which way the fire was headed.

"It's close," he said.

Sisters Susan Carol and Alice Plichcik found themselves at the community center after deciding to flee their home in Santa Rosa's Coffey Park neighborhood around 1 a.m. Monday amid a thick layer of smoke. They said they received no official evacuation order and lamented the lack of warning.

"We didn't take any jewelry, we didn't take any paperwork," Ms. Plichcik said.

"I thought I was just going because I was tired of the smoke," added Ms. Carol, who-underestimating the danger to the neighborhood-decided to leave behind three large tortoises.

But as they drove out with several other pets-three cats and a macaw-some homes were already burning, the sisters said, and a police officer was directing residents to "just go, go, go now!"

They returned to the badly burned area several hours later, driving past the charred remains of their neighbors' homes, and a number of destroyed cars that had been turned white by the flames and streaked black with soot. Their own house on Shelbourne Way had been reduced to a tangle of still smoking beams.

Several patches of the property were still aflame Monday night as the sisters used cellphone flashlights to search for one of their cats, Rooster, that they hadn't been able to locate when leaving the house earlier. Ms. Carol had already located the shells of two of her tortoises.

The sisters said they had only what was left in their car. They weren't sure if they'd stay at Finley Community Center shelter or look for another place to stay.

"It's unbelievable," Ms. Carol said. "I feel like screaming, just screaming.