Nuns Fire: Santa Rosa neighborhood looks like bomb dropped on it

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (Brooks Jarosz/KTVU) - While the Nuns Fire wasn’t the biggest fire burning in wine country on Monday, the blaze had devastated entire neighborhoods, looking as if a bomb had dropped in typically idyllic Santa Rosa.

“It’s just devastating,” one woman told KTVU, her voice cracking as if she might cry. She looked at the charred buildings at the corner of Range Avenue and Bicentennial Way, and the people standing around in hospital masks because the smoke in the air was so thick. Her friend’s mother was evacuating her home of about 20 years. “This is not where you would expect a large fire to be,” she said.

As of Monday afternoon, the Nuns Fire, located off Highway 12, north of Glen Ellen in Santa Rosa, grew from 300 to 5,000 acres, small in comparison to the larger 35,000 acre Tubbs Fire in Napa County off Highway 128 near Calistoga.

But the damage was very devastating to those that lived there.

Throughout the region, multiple fires were burning in Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency.