San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)

Napa groups pay for fire monitoring

- By Jess Lander

As California enters the height of fire season, Napa wine and hospitalit­y groups have joined forces in an effort to stop blazes from getting out of control.

With government resources spread thin and a wildfire prevention initiative failing to pass in Napa in June, private organizati­ons are stepping in. Together, the Napa Valley Grapegrowe­rs, Napa Valley Vintners and Visit Napa Valley are spending $33,000 per month for around-theclock monitoring of artificial intelligen­ce-powered cameras that can detect a fire within seconds of starting.

But the collaborat­ion is only a temporary solution. While it will hopefully help keep residents and businesses safe through the current fire season, the groups also want to send a clear message to Napa County to do more next year.

“Anything that will reduce the likelihood of a small fire from turning into a massive,

destructiv­e wildfire is a priority,” said Rex Stults, the Napa Valley Vintners vice president of industry relations. “We’re filling a void … but this really in our eyes is something that the county should be doing.”

Security company Illuminati­on Technologi­es California has placed three IQ FireWatch sensors — initially developed in Germany for the European Space Station to detect gases and changes in the atmosphere — in locations that cover 48% of Napa County’s geography. Once the cameras detect a fire, they send an alert to a monitoring team in Arizona, which then calls Napa County Fire and Rescue, typically within three to five minutes. An email is also sent containing exact coordinate­s, the assessor’s parcel number, a map and images.

The 24-7 monitoring is one of the greatest difference­s between the ITC system and its competitor­s. But it’s also partly what makes this system costly: $33,000 per month for the three cameras currently in operation. To share the expense, each industry group will cover a month of the remainder of this year’s fire season, ending in November. Monitoring from September to November will cost $99,000 total. ITC is not making a profit off the cameras, according to the company.

ITC’s first two cameras were installed in 2019 as a proof of concept. “What kind of put us on the map for the county was when we captured the Glass Fire,” said Marcela Hernandez, a Napa Valley resident who spearheade­d the applicatio­n of the sensors with her father, who owns the security company. “We were one of the first to capture it.”

In 2020, the cameras weren’t yet being monitored so they did not place a call to authoritie­s. But ITC provided sensor imagery for an investigat­ion after the fact, which ultimately exonerated Cakebread Cellars, whose vineyard property was initially believed to be the source of the fire.

Napa County funded the two sensors, plus one additional, on a trial basis in 2021 but chose not to re-up this year after a fire initiative on the June 7 ballot failed to pass. The first of its kind in California, Measure L sought to fund wildfirepr­evention projects with a quarter-cent sales tax, which would have brought Napa sales tax up to 8 cents per dollar. It failed to get the two-thirds vote needed to pass after some citizens expressed concerns over inflation and that the measure didn’t specify what fire prevention efforts the tax would fund.

The county’s top fire priority is fuel reduction, which requires $10 million a year, said Napa County Supervisor Ryan Gregory. “We don’t want to be at the mercy of state and federal money,” he said, explaining that Measure L would have put fuel reduction on autopilot, making room for additional funds to be used on alternativ­e wildfire efforts, such as the cameras.

“But Measure L failed,” he said, “and the money we found this year had to go to fuel reduction and there wasn’t anything left to discuss.”

So Hernandez looked for other financing options. “The two industries with the most to lose are wine and hospitalit­y,” she said.

That’s when Caymus Vineyards owner Chuck Wagner volunteere­d to fund camera monitoring for the beginning of the fire season, June through August. He also wrote a letter, published in the Napa Valley Register, urging other community members to help. That’s when the other groups stepped in.

“The fires of 2017 and 2020 felt like a continual onslaught, and the status quo feels like it’s not enough to combat the new normal,” said Molly Williams, community relations director for the Napa Valley Grapegrowe­rs. “We’re hoping this monthlong sponsorshi­p and community collaborat­ion is going to lead to getting something put in place that’s more long-term.”

A long-term solution should come from the county, the groups say. Their goal is to expand the fleet from three cameras to 12, which would cover 98% of Napa County and cost $132,000 per month.

Illuminati­on Technologi­es has installed early detection fire sensors in Napa County. After detecting a fire, cameras alert a monitoring team in Arizona, which calls Napa responders.

“Sometimes priorities get pitted against one another,” Williams said. “Fuel mitigation against fire suppressio­n against early detection. At the end of the day, we need all of it.”

While 2022 has been an uneventful fire season in Napa Valley thus far, the sensors have detected many small fires, which were extinguish­ed quickly. In July, ITC called in a detection for what came to be known as the Duhig Fire a full 30 minutes before the public was notified via the crowdsourc­ed Watch Duty app. In August, the monitoring center called in six detections and, during the recent heat wave, another six potential fire threats between Sept. 5-8.

The cameras can detect fires at least 9 miles out, but one camera recently detected a potential fire that was 80 miles away, according to Hernandez. One of the most notable features is that they have a monochrome sensor that can detect fires at night; Wine Country fires in both 2017 and 2020 started while most people were sleeping. And unlike a 911 caller, the cameras are able to provide authoritie­s with an exact location and images.

Yet the likelihood of the county funding the cameras next year depends on more data, said supervisor Gregory. Specifical­ly, he’d like to see how the calls from ITC’s monitoring center compare to the first 911 calls.

Hernandez is working on building a case study not only for Napa County but for insurance companies, too. She hopes

Clover Flat

Spring Mountain

LAKE COUNTY

SONOMA COUNTY

MARIN COUNTY that these cameras can provide a safeguard to the many providers that pulled out of Napa Valley following the recent fires. “A lot of people lost their insurance,” she said. “We’ve had those preliminar­y conversati­ons with insurance companies that if we’re able to prove Napa is watched over 24-7, it would be a considerat­ion to give some of these people insurance again.”

ITC also plans to eventually expand its system to other fire-prone regions, like the rest

YOLO COUNTY

SOLANO COUNTY of California and Oregon, which would enable the company to profit from its endeavor.

“We want to employ all the tools in the toolbox, and this early detection is one of the tools,” said Stults of Napa Valley Vintners. “Every minute counts. I think that’s the bottom line.”

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