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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2020 • SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA • PRESSDEMOCRAT.COM

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Relief for fire crews and many evacuees

JOHN BURGESS / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Dave and Lee Stare carry a cooler back into their Dry Creek home on Tuesday after spending five nights with friends during the evacuation caused by the Walbridge fire. The couple were happy to be home after losing their previous home in the Mark West area during the Tubbs fire in 2017.

“Living in a hotel, not knowing from day to day whether the fire’s going to take over your town, it’s so much stress.” BRIAN CASSATT, Walbridge fire evacuee who was thrilled to return Tuesday to his home by Russian River

By MARY CALLAHANTHE PRESS DEMOCRAT

The Walbridge fire will burn for days yet and smolder for lon-ger, but crews are rapidly gain-ing command of the 54,500-plus-acre wildfire in northwestern Sonoma County, cutting deep lines around its perimeter and hampering the flames within.

Though officially just 17% contained by nightfall, the 9-day-old wildfire was suffi-ciently in hand Tuesday that emergency officials lifted evac-uation orders and warnings across a wide swath of the area, reducing the number of people under such notices by about 85%, county Emergency Man-agement Director Chris Godley said.

When the day dawned, more than 40,000 Sonoma County res-idents were under some kind of warning or order. But by after-noon, just over 5,100 people were

still subject to mandatory evac-uation, with an estimated 424 advised to be ready to go if con-ditions changed, officials said.

Brian Cassatt, was thrilled to be back home on Drake Road, from which he had been driv-en a week earlier by chunks of burned wood flung from across the Russian River. He described an odyssey that took him and his family to motels in Ukiah, Clear Lake and, finally, Santa Rosa.

“Living in at hotel, not know-ing from day to day whether the fire’s going to take over your town, it’s so much stress,” Cas-satt, 54, said. “And living in a ho-tel where everybody’s the same way.”

Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, whose district includes much of the area along the north-ern bank of the Russian River that’s still under evacuation,

National Guard sending small force to help battle blaze

CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Beverly Hills Fire Captain Mike Cherry keeps an eye on a fire burning down to the road along Mill Creek Road near Healdsburg on Tuesday

By MARTIN ESPINOZATHE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Lee Stare was happy to be home, despite the smoke that still clogged the skies above her home in Dry Creek Valley.

Stare and her husband, Dry Creek Vineyard founder Dave Stare, lost their previ-ous house in the Mark West area during the Tubbs fire three years ago. On Tuesday afternoon, they went straight to their home on Lambert Bridge Road west of Healds-burg shortly after authorities allowed residents to return to the rural neighborhood threatened by flames for much of the past week.

Though she is grateful their home survived, she is grow-

Most of residents get OK to go home

EVAN VUCCI / ASSOCIATED PRESS

First lady Melania Trump speaks Tuesday from the Rose Garden of the White House.

By STEVE PEOPLES, MICHELLE L. PRICE AND DARLENE SUPERVILLEASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — First lady Melania Trump cast her hus-band as the best hope for Ameri-ca and Americans in a Rose Gar-den address Tuesday night as President Donald Trump turned to family, farmers and the trap-pings of the presidency to boost his reelection chances on the second night of the scaled-down Republican National Conven-tion.

The president pardoned a re-formed felon, used the White House grounds to elevate his wife’s keynote address and oversaw a naturalization cere-mony for several immigrants in the midst of the prime-time program. The welcoming tone was at odds with some of his own policies, which are aimed at reducing both legal and illegal immigration.

“In my husband, you have a president who will not stop fighting for you and your fami-lies,” said Mrs. Trump, an immi-grant herself. “he will not give up.”

Mrs. Trump and two of his five children led a diverse col-lection of supporters, including a convicted bank robber, call-ing for Trump’s reelection on a night that featured a distinct-ly more positive tone than the night before.

The first-term president is laboring to improve his stand-ing in a 2020 presidential race he is currently losing under the weight of the coronavirus and its related economic dev-astation. Most polls report that Democratic rival Joe Biden has a significant advantage in terms of raw support; the former vice president also leads on charac-ter issues such as trustworthi-ness and likability.

First lady says US best hope is TrumpCONVENTION » Second night includes pardon, naturalization ceremony

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By AUSTIN MURPHYTHE PRESS DEMOCRAT

VENADO — Joy Ann Solem is 84 now, but her memories of the one-room schoolhouse she attended from first through eighth grades remain vivid and clear.

That was the Daniels Schoolhouse, around nine miles west of downtown Healdsburg, on Mill Creek Road. Solem still can see the light that streamed through the northwest-facing windows. She can smell the cedar sawdust used to clean and brush the floors. “I loved that smell,” said Solem Tuesday, from her home in Granite Bay.

She takes mischievous pleasure in the memory of the illicit pulley system set up under the deep sills of the windows older students used to pass notes.

She remembers the piano, and the potbellied stove that kept the occupants

warm on chill mornings.There was the stove Tuesday after-

noon, reposing in a bed of ash and melted rebar. A valiant stand by firefighters had not been enough to save the structure from the marauding Walbridge fire.

The scorched, ruined stove lying on its side in the rubble was not the same one that warmed Solem in the 1940s, but a re-placement provided during a restoration by the Venado Historical Society. Among those leading that renovation were Joy Ann’s younger sister, Bonnie Cussins Pitkin; her husband, Richard; Cheryl and Steve Caletti; Sue Campbell; Glo-ria Eggers; and Holly Hoods, executive director and curator of the Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society.

Hoods said in an email she was “griev-ing the loss of the Schoolhouse,” which from 1883 to 1951 “served generations of

Fire ravages community known for heavy rainfall

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KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Trees are reflected in water Tuesday at home in Venado that was razed by the Walbridge fire.