'I lost my whole life': California fire victim returns to devastation

As firefighters battled the infernos that have engulfed California's Sonoma wine region, Wade Hoefer surveyed the ruins of his painting studio at the Soda Rock Winery.

"It's just ashes," the 71-year-old artist-in-residence said as he pointed to a pile of rubble with a trembling hand. "I lost my whole life there."

"All I have is my clothes on my back," said the grey-haired painter, who was wearing sunglasses and dressed in green shorts, a white tee shirt, a jacket, scarf and battered sandals.

Hoefer is one of the victims of the Kincade Fire, a massive blaze that has forced the mandatory evacuation of nearly 200,000 people in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, and consumed more than 75,000 acres (30,000 hectares) as of Tuesday.

More than 3,000 firefighters are battling the wildfire, which has been fueled by winds with gusts of up to 70 miles per hour (112 kilometers per hour).

Hoefer said he fled at the last minute on Saturday evening as the strong winds pushed the fire towards the Soda Rock Winery in the town of Healdsburg.

"I heard the wind, I saw the flames," Hoefer said. "It was coming right here. The firemen arrived as I left.

"I just went to the shop nearby, parked and waited," he said, adding that he couldn't sleep all night.

"When I came back in the morning, at 6:00 am, it was just embers, like charcoal," the artist said. "The (water) tower fell into my studio."

Hoefer has been staying in his car since the fire.

"I had just bought this wonderful new bed," Hoefer said. "Forgot my passport and everything inside the studio."

Besides Hoefer's studio, the historic building housing the winery's main pavilion was also destroyed by the fire -- along with about 2,000 bottles of wine.

Just the stone facade remains standing along with an enormous steel sculpture of a boar called "Lord Snort."

- 'We're alive' -

Built in 1869, the building had served over the years as a bank, a general store and a post office, said Isabelle Adams, the hospitality director at Soda Rock.

Historical records show there was once a winery on the site in the 1880s.

The current owners, Ken and Diane Wilson, bought the property in 2000 and reopened its doors as Soda Rock Winery in 2010, hosting weddings, concerts and other events in addition to wine tastings.

"It's shocking," Adams said. "But it's just stuff. We rebuilt everything once already. We're just going to have to do it again."

Another Sonoma County resident, Josh Terry, lost his home in the 2015 Valley Fire and defied the mandatory evacuation warnings this time around to try to save his house.

"Took the kids, grabbed my guitar, a picture off the wall and left," the 41-year-old welder said of his 2015 experience. "I lost my house. This time I wasn't going to do that."

"In 2015, I always felt I could have done something, you know," Terry told AFP as he worked on his motorcycle next to his red wooden home. "I could have soaked my roof, turned sprinklers on."

Terry said he had made preparations to flee this time also but decided to stick it out.

"Car is packed to the brim, still is," he said. "My dad is angry at me for not leaving."

"We were safe here, I felt," he said. "The fire guys did their jobs. They set up shop real quick in this yard here and the wind shifted.

"We're alive and this is where I want to be so I'm happy."