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Article snippet: SANTA ROSA, Calif. — It looked like a blizzard of red embers had slammed into the suburban home of Bruce and Lisa Coats. Mr. Coats recounted on Monday how he used his garden hose to spray his home down in hopes of saving it. Then he went to his neighbors’ homes and tried the same thing. It was futile. The combination of wind and fire was unstoppable. Coffey Park, a subdivision of hundreds of homes in Santa Rosa, an hour north of San Francisco, burned to the ground. “It looks like a bomb went off,” said Ms. Coats, an accounts assistant at a retirement home. “A nuke bomb,” said her husband, a soils expert. Coffey Park was one of a number of neighborhoods in Northern California’s wine country devastated by wildfires on Monday. The flames were fueled by intense winds and months of dry weather. At least 15 people were killed and up to 20,000 were forced to evacuate in one of the most destructive fire emergencies in this fire-prone state’s history. Fires tore through the hills around Glen Ellen in Sonoma County. A Hilton hotel about a mile from Coffey Park was destroyed, as was a retirement trailer park called Journey’s End. These were among the more than 2,000 structures that the authorities say were destroyed by the fires. Evidence of the fire’s intensity was everywhere in Coffey Park, which residents described as an apocalyptic scene. The aluminum wheels on cars melted and dripped down driveways like tiny rivers of mercury before hardening. A pile of bottles melded ... Link to the full article to read more