In the tiny parishes of Kenwood and Glen Ellen, Sonoma Counties, clumps of ash and soot continued to drift through the air on Monday afternoon, although most residents had long since escaped to safety.

Dozens of houses, farms, and automobiles along Highway 12 were reduced to little more than twisted metal and ashes, while numerous small pockets of flame burned what was left of dozens of lots.

Hassan Zaidi roamed the charred remains of the Trinity Oaks subdivision in Glen Ellen on Monday, checking to see if a family friend’s home had survived the fire that lashed through the towns early that morning.

While his friend was out of town, Zaidi was in the middle of the firestorm.

“I looked out the window and everything was burning around us,” said Zaidi. “It was disastrous.”

Despite the devastation, Zaidi’s own house on Dunbar Street was spared and he sent his family to San Francisco while he stayed to review the damage.

After climbing past the fallen branches and derelict power lines of a small residential street, Zaidi finally reached the gate of his friend’s house on Jerri Drive. Behind a knot of blackened trees was a long wall, the only piece that was left of his friend’s once stately home.

“I’m so sorry,” Zaidi said on the phone to his friend who was at his home in San Francisco. “It burned. It totally burned down, but you’re fine. That’s all that counts.”

An unbroken curtain of smoke hung in the air all day, making the sun and sky appear in various shades of yellow and red.

A small house in the Trinity Oaks subdivision seemed to catch the brunt of the fury of the fire. The house was leveled except for a brick chimney, and the ashes still streamed bands of smoke and shimmering heat. The neighborhood reeked of smoke and burned debris.

John LemMon said he was standing on the roof of his house in Glen Ellen late Sunday, armed with his garden hose and putting out any flames and embers he could see. He also cut wooden fences with a chainsaw and piled them away from the fire in hopes of fending off the flames.

“It was apocalyptic,” said LemMon. He and his family were evacuated around midnight Sunday, he said, but he “snuck back” to Glen Ellen early Monday to investigate the damage.

His house was undamaged, although his neighbor’s shed was destroyed by fire.

“I was lucky,” said LemMon.

In Kenwood, the path of fire seemed to take on a gruesome sense of randomness – there were houses with little or no damage, a few yards from the charred husks of previous houses.

While much of Kenwood’s downtown area appeared to be escaping serious damage with luxury shops and high-end restaurants, the same couldn’t be said of the city’s residential areas. Some of the city’s residents who stayed behind on Monday or were returning later reported that flames swept north to south, accelerating as they leaked along Highway 12 and destroyed homes.

On Monday afternoon at Chateau St. Jean, several acres of vines along Highway 12 were visibly unscathed and still laden with fruit. But a huge cloud of smoke that was building up just behind the main building of the property indicated that the fire burning on the hillside was coming dangerously close.

Although the fires appeared to have struck much of Kenwood and Glen Ellen, the police and sheriff’s deputies continued to block large parts of the area and keep people out.

Police blocked an eight mile stretch of Highway 12 eastbound from Melita Road near Kenwood to Arnold Drive in Glen Ellen while firefighters continued to clear a number of hot spots.

Troy Taylor from Kenwood was unable to return to his home because of the roadblock and prepared to spend the night in his pickup truck in a gravel yard off Highway 12 so he could get as close as possible to the house and the animals he left behind would have .

Taylor was able to quickly collect his dogs and cats before running away from a “fireball” that came down from the northern hill but had to leave his horses behind. He was deeply concerned about her safety and the fate of his home, which he had not seen since leaving on Sunday evening.

“I put the horses in the pasture, said goodbye, and prayed,” said Taylor. “Then I had a good shout, said goodbye to the house and we’ll see what’s there.”

Dominic Fracassa is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com

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After installing gigabit fiber in businesses and homes in San Francisco in recent years, Santa Rosa-based Internet service provider Sonic has moved its expansion of those connections in Northern California to the East Bay and the Peninsula for the time being, according to CEO Dane Jasper.

Following installations in Brentwood, Berkeley and Albany, the company is currently installing cables to Oakland properties and has projects in San Carlos, Burlingame, Daly City and Redwood City.

“Oakland is the second major Bay Area flagship city we’re launching,” Jasper told the Business Journal.

An important catalyst for this expansion was Sonic’s win in the tender to provide the data network for city schools.

“Oakland Unified School District’s sourcing of Sonic fiber gave Sonic the opportunity to build a city-wide backbone for connecting all public schools,” said Jasper. “These schools are in the neighborhood, so the schools are in a unique position to catalyze new developments.”

The same opportunity arose when Sonic won contracts for the Old Adobe and Petaluma City Schools neighborhoods a few years ago, followed by fiber optic for city government facilities. This led to the expansion of fiber optics to commercial areas in the north and south of the city as well as the surrounding houses.

After the Berkely schools struggled with the spotty high-speed internet connections needed for distance learning during the pandemic, Sonic recently announced that they will provide free fiber-optic to-home services to about 7,000 households, covering around 10,000 students At the end of this year.

Sonic’s first fiber-to-the-home projects were Sebastopol and Brentwood. The latter was attractive because the city of East Bay was an early adopter of building standards that make installing fiber optic ducts easier in areas where cable television, power and telephone lines for neighborhoods were buried, Jasper said.

Unlike conventional connection trenches, which are 5 to 8 feet deep and several inches wide, one-half inch diameter micro-trenches for the fiber channels are 10 to 18 inches deep and 1 to 2 inches wide. In older parts of the city with antenna connections, the fiber optic cables are connected to households or companies via masts.

Sonic reached out to the City of Santa Rosa about 10 years ago for approval to expand the fiber in an existing commercial area. The city was ready to allow this under a limited pilot program that would allow officials to better understand possible long-term implications for roads, according to Gabe Osburn, assistant director of development services. Sonic used traditional drilling and digging methods.

“Since then, applications from all service providers, including Sonic, have used traditional drilling and trenching methods,” Osburn said in an email. “Sonic is currently upgrading the infrastructure in the city center with traditional construction methods. We haven’t received any microtrenching requests from any of the active communication providers recently. Our willingness to review this technology and possibly include an allowance in a pilot program has not changed and we are ready to respond to the requests as they come. “

Sonic has used a relationship with Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit to expand its fiber optic backbone in both counties, Jasper said.

“That was the key,” he said.

The company supplies SMART with fiber optics for crossing signals as well as ticket machines and WiFi. Sonic has illuminated several commercial areas, including the Airport Business Park and North Dutton Business Park in Santa Rosa, South McDowell Business Park in Petaluma, the former State Farm complex in Rohnert Park, and Hamilton Landing and Bel Marin Keys in Novato.

The planned expansion of SMART’s service to Windsor, which is expected to be completed early next year, will include the expansion of fiber into that city, Jasper said.

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction, and real estate. Prior to the Business Journal, he wrote for the Bay City News Service in San Francisco. He graduated from Walla Walla University. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.

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