At the time, the Tubbs Fire was the most destructive wildfire in California history,[7][1] burning parts of Napa, Sonoma, and Lake counties, inflicting its greatest losses in the city of Santa Rosa.

[14] Santa Rosa's economic loss from the Tubbs Fire was estimated at $1.2 billion (2017 USD), with five percent of the city's housing stock destroyed.

[19] The Mark West Springs area, north of Santa Rosa in unincorporated Sonoma County, was directly in the path of the fire.

Notably, over a thousand animals at the Safari West Wildlife Preserve remained unharmed, saved by owner Peter Lang, who, aged 76, single-handedly fought back the flames for more than 10 hours, using only garden hoses.

[37] The destruction on Monday also included the complete loss of a senior living complex, Oakmont of Villa Capri; Hidden Valley Satellite, a primary school; and the Santa Rosa portion of Paradise Ridge Winery.

[35] The Cardinal Newman High School campus was badly damaged, as was one end of the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts.

[39] Additionally, the fire destroyed Santa Rosa Community Health's Vista Campus, the largest in its system, which served 24,000 people annually.

[46] The Lake County Sheriff's Office issued an advisory evacuation notice for residents in the Middletown area, to the north of Calistoga.

[48] In the city of Santa Rosa, officials said that the fire had destroyed an estimated 2,834 homes, along with about 400,000 square feet of commercial space.

Fire officials searched for dangerous hot spots that could re-ignite the blaze, and utility workers began cleaning up the demolished neighborhoods.

[55] Historical archives of Hewlett-Packard (consisting of over 100 boxes of documents from William Hewlett and David Packard, who had founded the company in Silicon Valley in 1938) were completely lost when two buildings on the Fountaingrove headquarters campus of Keysight Technologies were incinerated.

[77] The damage caused by the two fires differed dramatically, however: since 1964, hundreds of expensive homes, a golf course and clubhouse restaurant, office and medical buildings, light industry, lakeside retirement homes, a long row of nursing facilities, and two hotels were built in the Fountaingrove area, which had been almost entirely open land in 1964.

[78] The path the Hanly Fire took in 1964 began in Calistoga, then along Porter Creek and Mark West Springs roads into Sonoma County, burning homes along Mark West Springs and Riebli roads, through Wikiup, and to Mendocino Avenue, where it stopped, across the street from Journey's End Mobile Home Park.

[a] In addition to local coverage, CNN and Fox News were on scene in Sonoma County, focusing primarily on northern Santa Rosa.

[88] From October 9 through 13, Snapchat ran a geolocation tagging filter to isolate material about the fire, and these posts were featured on the Discover page.

[90] Donald Laird, an instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College, and Richard Dunn, a local photographer, submitted featured posts.

[92] The Press Democrat staff also won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for "lucid and tenacious coverage of historic wildfires that ravaged the city of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County".

[102] PG&E needed to get its bankruptcy plan approved by June 30, 2020 to be included in the fund for fire costs created by the new state law AB 1054.

[118] In October 2020, on the third anniversary of the Tubbs Fire, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that as part of a separate $1 billion settlement with local governments, Sonoma County had received almost $150 million from PG&E and the city of Santa Rosa city had received $95 million, with officials "facing tough decisions about how to spend all the money.