A wind-driven wildfire has forced the evacuation of several hundred homes and a hospital in the heart of northern California’s wine country. The blaze, dubbed the Glass Fire, broke out before dawn on Sunday near in Calistoga in Napa Valley, and raced toward the adjacent towns of Deer Park and St Helena. The fire spread across more than 1,000 acres (400 hectares) and flames advanced within a mile of the Adventist Health St Helena hospital. All 55 patients who were at the hospital at the time were safely evacuated by ambulance and helicopter over the course of five hours, hospital spokeswoman Linda Williams told Reuters.“We had ambulances lined up from all over the Bay area,” she said, adding that while the facility was surrounded by smoke, the skies over the hospital itself remained clear enough for helicopters to land and take off with patients who needed to be evacuated by air. She said it was the second wildfire-related evacuation of the 151-bed hospital in about a month, coming after a massive cluster of lightning-sparked blazes that swept several counties north of the San Francisco Bay region. Evacuation orders also were posted on Sunday for Deer Park and several other Napa County communities, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) spokesman Tyree Zander. Some 600 homes were under evacuation orders, with residents of roughly another 1,400 dwellings warned to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. About 5,000 people were affected by evacuation notices, he said. By 1:30 pm, flames stoked by winds gusting up to 50 mph (80 km/h)had scorched some 1,200 acres (485 hectares) of grassy rolling hillsides and oak woodlands, with zero per cent containment, Zander said. There were no immediate reports of injuries, but a Reuters photographer in St Helena saw a number of structures that had been burned.