If youre wondering what that is, so are we. And just now, ceo and president bill johnson explained what that is. He says that the jumper is a piece of wire that basically jumps the conductor over the insulator. We know that it was broken. We also know according to johnson that this is a 43yearold tower that had been inspected four times. Now as you said, this transmission line was not deenergized, and johnson explained why not. Transmission lines in the area remained energized during the wind event consistent with our established protocols and procedures. In other words, they did not meet the conditions that we forecast for transmission level outages. We didnt see the wind speeds in the forecast that we typically would see for transmission outage. And so we relied on the protocol, and we still at this point do not know exactly what happened. The utility turned off power in the area at 9 48 last night, nearly half an hour after the fire started. Pg e is working closely with cal fire to investigate the kincaid fire. Heres more about how the fire started. A vegetation fire reported as in the geysers going to be on john kincaid road. Thinking time lapsed video showed just how quickly the kincaid fire exploded, spreading over Sonoma County. Fire dispatchers quickly identified power lines are a possible cause. Also, possible power lines down in the area. All units acknowledge life safety hazard on checkback. But take a look at another angle telephone fire about 9 20 last night. There is something glowing in the distance, then it fades and then there is fire. Firefighters arrive todler find a large fire spread over several hundred acres. Dispatch vegetation fire to geysers. This animation from google earth gives you an idea of the topography of the area before the fire began and the proximity to the geysers geothermal plant. You can see buildings, power lines and geothermal pipelines that run across the area. Cal fire investigators are on the scene looking for evidence in kincaid road and the aptly named Burned Mountain road. Close attention is being paid to the power lines. Calpine who owns the geysers power plant provided a statement saying, quote, consistent with our Fire Prevention protocols, due to the wind conditions we had deenergized our local power line system before the fire started. We do not believe our facilities caused the fire. There are power lines operated by third parties across the geysers. And this Media Briefing continues right now. Bill johnson saying that 125,000 customers have had their power restored. He is also emphasizing that pg e workers are getting threat, and he encourages people if they are mad to be mad at pg e, but to leave those employees alone and allow them to do their job to get the power turned back on. Live in San Francisco, melanie woodrow, abc7 news. Melanie, thank you very much. All right, now, as weve told you, the kincaid fire burned homes in geyserville and forced thousands of people to flee the area. For many it added insult to injury after the pg e Power Outages. Abc7 News ReporterLaura Anthony has been talking with people in geyserville all day long. She is there with the story. Hi, dan. Im high in the hills right now above geyserville. Im here on pine flat road ahead of the firefight. Lets show you whats happening right now in the distance. It was a pretty dramatic scene just a few minutes ago as firefighters lined up on that ridge there and actually set a backfire. Thats what youre seeing right there. In fact, they are appearing to try to set that fire and stop the fire, the spread of the larger fire right where you see that pink retardant. Were dispatched to a fire near the guys geysers geothermal plant outside the community of geyserville. Do you know anything about whether the plant had anything to do with the start of the fire . We do not at this time. T does that plant do . Its one of the Worlds Largest geothermal Electricity Generating plants. How difficult has this fire been overnight to fight and what are the challenges Going Forward . Overnight it was fueled by 60mileanhour winds, in addition to low relative humidities and high temperatures. So that coupled with the dry fuels that we already experienced made it really challenging, along with the terrain in that area is extremely difficult and rugged. So firefighters had a really tough time fighting the perimeter of the fire let alone working on the perimeter of the fire. So Going Forward, we expect the same dry conditions, a little less wind, however we are expecting some more winds coming up this weekend. So what is the goal the next two days before the winds kick up again . Its imperative that we do our best to get around it as much as we can and get as much of the heat knocked out so we are prepared for the winds coming up this following weekend. This is gotime for you guys, right . This is the time that we were all concerned about . It is. Weve been lucky this year, and were hoping to not have this happen, but were back where we are. Its what we do. And we are prepared for it. Its just going to take a little more work than wed hope for. And were back live here. Were showing you the wind condition right now. You can see there is a little bit of a breeze thats picking up a little bit, but nothing like we saw overnight with those gusts up to 60 miles per hour. We can also tell you that with maybe 15, 20 minutes of daylight left, this aerial attack is probably going to wrap up. So thats probably why they decided to set that backfire, to try to keep that line or hold that line overnight when they cant fly the tankers or the helicopters that weve seen all day here. Live in Sonoma County, Laura Anthony, abc7 news. All right, laura, thanks. Of course, that didnt help. The fire spread so quickly last night and they couldnt do an aerial attack. As you can see, the kincaid fire is burning 10,000 plus acres. They made some Good Progress because the wind has died down considerably. But as you can still see, flames are burning. Exactly. The terrain certainly has not helped either. Well, abc7 News ReporterWayne Freedman was also in geyserville today. He joins us outside of the River Rock Casino. Wayne, you described it as a double whammy for people who live there. Its been quite a day. Right here at River Rock Casino, we may have watched the last of the air drops today because the sun is going down on the horizon. There has been a battle all day behind us to keep this hot spot contained, to keep the fire from going down the road. Meantime, if you take a look over to the right, that is the Alexander Valley in what would otherwise be a beautiful sunset, if not for the haze. On the other side of it, geyserville, where people have been evacuated, but theyre closer than they think. Dont start cutting it yet. Ill tell you when. Here is one of those hiccups of evacuating they dont tell you about. Debbie and tony matas of geyserville when they tried to pull out their pickup truck this morning, they discovered someone had blocked the exit. Turn that way. Are you worried . Yeah, a little bit. A little bit . What am i going to come home to . Am i going to have a house here or what . When they tell you that fire is bearing down and its time to move, then its too close to home, and that tells the story of geyserville this morning, a town turned brown in the morning light, where those left behind handed out protection masks like halloween candy. Its a lot of work. Debbie and tony matos actualactual went to work today. They returned with little time to pack up their belongs, like barney, their 20yearold dachshund. Have you ever seen conditions like this . Not this bad, no. And were still in the fortunate zone. A few miles east, no subtleties about what might have been. This is wine country where homes burned, and by mid afternoon, new hot spots lit up in the distance. These are backfires near the River Rock Casino where flames burned right to the edge of outlying buildings. Here is chief matt epstein, who knows too much about fires around here to dismiss more trouble. This is the same area during the valley fire. The same type of fire behavior, the same type of fire behavior we saw in 2017. This area is just ripe for wildland fire. Now the chief, chief epstein says the key right now is watch the wind if you want to get a sense of the wind, look at the smoke. Its going straight up right now. Thats a good sign. An hour ago, it was still blowing around, changing directions. Watch the smoke. The smoke tells the story. The sun is going down. Well see what morning brings. Live from River Rock Casino in Sonoma County, Wayne Freedman, abc7 news. We will certainly be watching, wayne, thank you. W just got new information on School Closures tomorrow because of this kincaid fire. Both the Alexander ValleyUnion School District making up 1 k through 6 school and geyserville unified making up four schools will not have class. We will of course let you know if any more schools are added to the list. Well, the north bay is obviously wine country, and some wineries have been forced to shut their doors because of the power shutoffs and the fire. Abc7 news anchor eric thomas joins us live from Robert Young Vineyards vineyards in geyserville with the story. Earlier you showed us grapes that had turned into race since, eric. Dan and dion, the Robert Young Vineyards considers itself lucky. It could have been a lot worse. Yes, they have suffered losses, lets show you this used to be a barn, believe it or not. Now it is a bunch of charred wood and some bent nails. There were also fires up here started by embers. That storage unit over there, as you can see, is completely burned out. But this is what they live for this. Is the money. This is the vineyard. These are the violence that they count on to make wine from, and you can see on the edges here some of those violence were damaged by the fire, and some of these grapes are now pretty much useless. And this was the day that Robert Young Vineyards were planning on picking these grapes. They were supposed to start at 6 00 tonight, ten minutes ago, and continue on until about 3 00 in the morning. But as we know, that is not going to happen right now. But most of these violence are in pretty good shape. They also have 50 head of cattle that they graze around here. Well, there is a problem with that because the fire has consumed a lot of the grassland, about 50 acres worth out of the 450 acres they own around here. And theyre wondering when they can go back into business, just like everybody else without power. Live right outside geyserville, eric thomas, abc7 news. Thank you very much. A tough firefight is under way. The big factors of course the weather and the terrain. Abc news correspondent will reed talked with cal fire about the fires behavior and what they can predict and fight. What were to happen if it were to catch and jump this way . Fire travels uphill extremely fast. The fuels are high. The humidity is down. Winds are up. So fires best friend. Sowere just trying to keep it over there and hope it stays that way. Its hard to tell with the unpredictable winds. All right. Lets check in on the winds and the other conditions that are very important to firefighters. Im checking the latest right now, dan. Heres a lock at wind conditions around the bay area. Im happy to report that the wind is generally calm, which is very good news, of course. Even near the area of the fire, we have calm wind conditions. And we have hador much of the afternoon and early evening. Although we have occasional gusts there, up to about 11 miles per hour, as you can see, the relative humidity there is very low. 9 . And its still quite warm. But well have calm wind across the entire region for a while before we get to another major wind event this weekend. Details on that in my forecast coming up. Dan and dion . Spencer, thanks very much. Lets take you live outside to sky 7 for another look at the fire zone. And oh, my, as you can see, flames still burning. A lot of smoke. This fire is now at least 10,000 acres, having gone from about 300 or 400 at 11 30 last night when we left you on the late newscast to 5,000 by day break and then it just exploded from there. Look at all of the smoke, dion. And truly, wind has played such a major role in spreading the flames. At one point, we had been getting some reports of wind gusts of 60 miles an hour or more. So you can imagine that is why this fire exploded in size. And obviously, as you look live from sky 7 at all of the smoke, very challenging even during the Daylight Hours for fire crews fighting from the air, because its so tricky with all of the smoke to get close to the fire lines. But they only have a few more minutes of daylight left. And the air attack, means water drops by helicopter and flame retardant by fixedwing aircraft, some of which came up from Southern California to help in this event, they cant do that at night so, then its the hand crews on the ground. Theyll have some headway doing that, but of course thats when without the air attack the flames can continue to really explode out of control as they did overnight because they couldnt attack it from the air. And lets take a look now from sky map 7. It really gives you an idea of where exactly we are looking at. You can see red winery road where we saw news anchor eric thomas. That is where a lot of wineries are located, not too far from fm highway 128 and of course u. S. 101. This gives you an idea of how widespread the damage is on the ground. 10,000 plus acres. The latest report that we had is that this fire was zero percent contained. We should hear more in about 45 minutes with another update. We expect both of those numbers, containment and acreage probably to go up since the last update. The fire has continued to burn. Now you can always get the latest on the fire at our website that is abc7news. Com. You can head there at the very end of this newscast and like we mentioned, youll get the latest from cal fire where they will be giving us an update. Another programing note to tell you about. Abc7 mornings will start early to bring you the latest of the live weather conditions at 4 00. Ill be joining kumasi aaron and lisa argent of course watching those weather conditions. Stay with us. We have a lot to get. To the fire is burning amidst pg e power outage, deliberate power shutoffs, which is supposed to prevent its equipment from sparking wildfires. Next, well get an update on the outages and when people might get a chance to see their lights turned back on. And well continue to cover the kincaid fire throughout this newscast. At 6 30, an update on some of the evacuees with four feet who are not alone in this emergency. Stay with us. More how you watch it does too. Tv just keeps getting better. This is xfinity x1. Featuring the Emmy Awardwinning voice remote. Streaming Services Without changing passwords and input. Live sports with realtime stats and scores. Access to the most 4k content. And your movies and shows to go. The best tv experience is the best tv value. Xfinity x1. Simple. Easy. Awesome. Xfinity. The future of awesome. As pg e crews work to restore everyones fire by 7 00 a. M. Tomorrow, many of us need to be prepared for outages again this weekend, which could be even more widespread than anything weve seen so far this month. The wind could be pretty bad this weekend. Pg e says the strongest winds of the year will move in overnight saturday into sunday and monday. Eight of the companys nine Service Zones in california are at elevated risk for a power shutoff. All of the bay area is in that risk zone. Now that means crews began safety inspections for restoration for the rest of the day, restarting at daybreak tomorrow morning. Governor newsom spoke today about the blackouts and wildfire conditions and had some harsh words for pg e. Its about dog eat dog capitalism meeting climate change. Its about corporate greed meeting climate change. Its about decades of mismanagement. Pulling no punches. Here are the three bay area counties affected by this round of shutoffs, sonoma, napa, and san mateo. Abc7 news anchor kristen sze joins us with a look at how pg es website is doing in terms of updating the information. The utility was criticized for its communication problems in the last round of shutoffs. Thats right, dan and dion. During the shutoffs two weeks ago, pg es website was constantly down. They promised improvements. Now things seem to be running much better on the website today. So here is their Public Safety power shutoff page. And if your power is out, youl probably want to check on restoration times and see when you get your power back. You see all the purple dots up there. They represent the areas where there is the Public Safety power shutoff. Lets say you click on a dot there, and look. It will tell you in that spot when you can expect to get your power back. In this case, tomorrow at 7 00 p. M. So you still have a while to go there. I want to bring up one more map to show you. You heard pg e saying in their News Conference that this weekend could be a lot more widespread in terms of the shutoffs. Take a look. Day two, that is saturday. Look at areas two, three, four, five in their zone in the region they cover. Thats all these areas. And you can see here in the bay area, thats 3 and 4. So a lot of us are going to have our power possibly shut off. And then you can see on sunday and monday, thats just their entire coverage area, pardon my circles, but you get the picture. This next event this weekend is no joke. It could be a lot more widespread. This information is probably not what you want to hear, not what you like, but at least dan and dionne, the informa