Napa

Before daybreak on Monday, at 6 a.m., my phone was alight with texts and phone calls -- hours after some had been chased from their homes by flames. I woke up bleary-eyed and answered the latest call. "It's gone," my cousin said, her voice drained by shock, "It's all gone." As a reporter, I've chased more tragedies than I can count. Mass shootings, murders, suicides, fallen trees, car accidents — you name it. I drove into them, ran into them, knocked on their doors, called them on the phone. But this week, the tragedy came to me. By that morning, Santa Rosa was in flames, along with other parts of Sonoma, Mendocino, Napa and Solano counties. By late Monday morning, hordes of people in packed cars were headed north, many with no certainty where they were going...

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