It was not a completely quiet weekend for the North Bay during this past weekend's Red Flag Warning, but the reported fires were fairly quickly contained.
In the first big Red Flag weekend of this fall's fire season, a warning issued on Friday extended through Saturday and Sunday across much of the Bay Area, due to an influx of Diablo winds — the dry, gusty off-shore winds that are our region's equivalent of Santa Ana winds.
Before all was said and done and the warning expired Sunday night, there were a few fires reported, including one sparked by a sideshow in Antioch Saturday night, and another sparked by a separate sideshow in Brentwood later that same night.
The biggest of the blazes was one that occurred at a fertilizer company north of Petaluma that broke out Sunday morning.
As NBC Bay Area reports, that fire was first reported around 8 a.m. Sunday, at 120 Jewett Road, a former chicken ranch that has been repurposed for fertilizer making.
In total, three barns at the facility were destroyed, and the Press Democrat reported an estimated $6 million worth of damage.
It's not clear what sparked the fire, but Rancho Adobe Fire District Chief Jeff Veliquette tells ABC 7 that the windy conditions helped spread the fire from structure to structure.
"It created a fast-moving fire from building to building through embers created by the fire, that's what happened today, the wind pushing the fire into other buildings," Veliquette said.
Another grass fire broke out Sunday morning near Oxford Way in Benicia, causing alarm among residents who worried about the proximity to an oil refinery.
That fire spread to about ten acres before being fully contained by firefighters.
Related: Contra Costa County Sideshows Spark Fires and Result in Crash Saturday Night
Photo via Petaluma Fire Department
