Authorities try to identify three people found dead in home burned by Hennessey Fire

Napa County authorities are working to identify three people found dead in a home burned down by the Hennessey Fire, which has consumed 195,000 acres across five counties since Monday.

The bodies were found by Napa County sheriff’s deputies Wednesday and recovered from the home in the 6900 block of Highway 128 on Thursday, said Sheriff’s Office spokesman Henry Wofford. The fire is believed to be the cause of death, he said.

The home was in a heavily wooded, rural section of Napa County with “hundreds and hundreds of trees and steep terrain,” Wofford said, adding:

“It’s a place that could catch fire very quickly.”

He said:

“I don’t know how many homes in that area burned but I drove through there today and it is entirely devastated. There were a lot of homes burned.”

The Hennessey Fire is the largest blaze in the LNU Lightning Complex fires, which together have torched 219,000 acres in Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Lake and Yolo counties. In addition to the deaths in Napa, one person died in Solano County, according to Cal Fire. The Hennessey Fire swept southeast Wednesday morning toward Vacaville and burned 118 homes and other structures in the English Hills and Pleasants Valley Road neighborhoods outside the city, according to the Solano County Sheriff’s Office.

The 21,125-acre Walbridge Fire in west Sonoma County is currently rated the most critical of the fires in the LNU Complex. Numerous homes have been reported burned in the fire, though no estimate has been given yet. Roughly 19,000 Sonoma County residents have been ordered to evacuate their homes or told they might be soon as the fire threatens the Russian River communities of Guerneville and Rio Nido. Further east, the Wine Country town of Healdsburg is also under evacuation warning.

In Napa, meanwhile evacuation orders were lifted Friday afternoon along Silverado Trail between Rosedale Road and Highway 29, near Calistoga.