GLASS FIRE ENGULFS OVER 61,000 ACRES
Homes charred: About 1,200 new acres burned overnight in Glass Fire; containment increased to 8%
Firefighters stood guard outside some of the country’s most renowned vineyards and the homes that surround them Friday as the Glass Fire continued to encroach on the communities of Calistoga and St. Helena — the heart of California’s famed wine country.
The blaze has engulfed 61,150 acres, burning most actively in the hills north of Calistoga and east of St. Helena. As a layer of hot, dry air helped to fuel the flames overnight, the blaze caught onto any fuel it could touch, Cal Fire said Friday. But the wind stayed calmer than anticipated, providing crews some relief and allowing them to increase the fire’s overall containment to 8%.
Crews reported progress near the Highway 12 corridor, said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Mark Brunton, and have successfully staved off flames from entering the city of Santa Rosa. Despite the steep terrain near Highway 29, the fire has likewise yet to jump the roadway.
Outside Calistoga, however, it was tougher to beat back hot spots, Brunton said. At least one home outside St. Helena was among the 220 residences to have burned down, while a house on the 1300 block of Tucker Road was engulfed late Thursday as flames jetted out windows of both its two stories.
“It’s been very difficult for us to place control lines in there,” Brunton said. “We’ve been having to go structure by structure.”
The main activity for the fire continues to be the area around Mt. St. Helena and Angwin.
“The good news is that with the lack of wind we didn’t have continued control issues,” Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nicholls said Friday evening. “However, due to that lack of wind, the smoke has stayed in place over us for the day. While it gives us less activity on
the fire line, it has also prevented our aerial assets from engaging in suppression activities today. Good and bad news there.
“The red flag conditions did not materialize to the extent that was forecasted last night, which gave crews an excellent opportunity to continue building on the ground that we’ve gained thus far in the incident,” Nicholls added.
To the north, firefighters have had more luck against the Zogg Fire, a similarly fast-moving inferno that has killed four people. Both blazes broke out Sunday, but Cal Fire reported 46% containment of the blaze in Shasta County Friday following “another successful day that increased containment,” according to Cal Fire.
The Glass Fire has been more destructive than the Zogg Fire, which has damaged or destroyed 180 structures and torched 56,000 acres, though there have yet to be injuries or fatalities reported in the Glass Fire.
Although offshore winds were less severe than forecast, a red f lag warning remained in effect in the North Bay mountains, East Bay hills and Santa Cruz Mountains through Friday. So far this year, fires have already scorched approximately 4 million acres in California — twice the previous record, about five times the size of Yosemite National Park — with peak fire season just now arriving as the calendar turns to October.
A heavy haze continued to hang over the region Friday, preventing fire crews from mounting an aerial attack against the fire.
While the negative human-health effects of smoke from the Glass Fire have been well documented, the toxic brown blanket covering the Napa Valley is also devastating bee populations, said local beekeeper John Sevigny.
In the front yard of his house on the outskirts of downtown Napa, Sevigny watched a honeybee crawl around on the gravel a few feet from its hive. “This one is confused,” Sevigny said, bending down to let the tiny insect crawl onto his calloused palm. The bee was likely suffering from malnutrition, Sevigny said, and may soon go the way of hundreds of thousands of others in his three dozen hives that have died because of smoke from the Glass Fire. He estimated 70% of his million or so bees have succumbed this year, more than double the usual losses from predation, mites and other causes. And because of the smoke, his surviving bees — and the other honeybees and wild bees in the region — are in trouble.
Smoke inhibits bees’ chemical- based communication, preventing effective defense against predators such as ants and wasps, and sometimes leading bees to abandon a hive because they aren’t picking up the queen’s pheromones, or because the hive appears to be in danger, Sevigny said. Many of the valley’s trees, shrubs and other plants that bees rely on for nectar and pollen have burned or been contaminated by smoke, he said.
“They can’t forage or collect clean water or nectar,” Sevigny, 59, added. “It just disrupts the whole ecosystem of the hive. It’s a cycle that just keeps on descending and dwindling.”
The fire came at a bad time: Bees are putting up honey stores for winter, and when they can’t forage, they start eating into the supply that’s supposed to carry them through till spring, he said. “If they eat the resources,” he said, “they’re going to starve to death.”
As flames threatened St. Helena and Calistoga from the west and east, a strike force from the San Jose Fire Department prepared to defend the AXR winery a few hundred yards west of Highway 29 between the two towns. Flames were approaching the winery down a steep, forested hillside.
“The fire up on the hill’s going to come right down to us,” said Battalion Chief Brett Maas, who added that the wildfire strike team composed entirely of the San Jose department’s firefighters was a first in the department’s history outside the city. By 9 p.m. Thursday, the flames threatening the AXR winery were still slowly approaching, but firefighters were confident the work they’d done, including wetting down surrounding areas and moving flammable materials such as outdoor furniture and awnings away from buildings, would help ensure the winery was saved.
But with the dry conditions, the half- mile- long front of fire above the home, winery and other buildings “is going to go where it wants to go,” Maas said. “The good thing is there’s no wind on it.”