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'We're Tired of It': Glass Fire Continues Assault Amid Dry, Windy Conditions

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Downtown Calistoga on Sept. 30, 2020. The entire city has been under evacuation orders and without power for days, as the Glass Fire looms just outside the city limits. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

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Battling winds, high temperatures and intensely dry conditions, firefighters in the North Bay’s wine country worked through the night Thursday in a race to slow the spread of the ravenous Glass Fire.

By Friday morning, the blaze had charred 60,148 acres in Napa and Sonoma counties, advancing more than 1,300 acres overnight, mostly in Napa County, Cal Fire said. It was just 6% contained.

Still, that increase in acreage was not nearly as bad as officials had feared, as the winds forecast for Thursday night were less intense than expected.

Calling it “a very active night for firefighters,” Cal Fire officials said a fire break in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park successfully prevented the fire from pushing south into the communities of Kenwood and Glen Ellen in Sonoma County.

“That line is in there — the line is holding, due to the winds not being as intense as we had expected originally,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Mark Brunton at a Friday morning briefing.

And things were “looking very good” heading into the east side of Santa Rosa, he added, where crews were continuing to extinguish hot spots around Highway 12 and were successfully holding lines along Calistoga Road up to the county line.

“Santa Rosa’s looking real good, including Annadale Park. There really is no concern,” said Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner. “We’ve got a lot of crews up there mopping up, and we’re just making sure that it holds.”

But above-average temperatures at higher elevations, along with low humidity and huge buildups of downed trees and dried vegetation, hindered any major containment gains during the week as more than 2,500 firefighters battled the blaze in alternating 24-hour shifts.

The firefight intensified in the east, in the hills above the Napa Valley, where flames continued to pose a major threat to several communities.

By Friday morning, the fire was hovering on the outskirts of Calistoga. Fire crews scrambled to stave off the flames, blocking them from crossing Highway 29 in the Palisades mountain range north of the city.

“Due to the topography and so forth it’s been very difficult for us to place good direct control lines in there,” Brunton said. “So we’ve had to go structure by structure prepping those structures and preparing and extinguishing fires as we can in that area.”

More crews and equipment were deployed in and around the town of 5,300 people, known for its hot springs, mud baths and wineries.

All of Calistoga and the surrounding area remained under mandatory evacuation orders Friday, where a hazardous layer of smoke continued to shroud the sky, preventing air tankers from attacking the fire from above.


“This our second time being evacuated as an entire city. First time was in 2017 for the Tubbs Fire, and that was the first time in our history since 1863,” said Calistoga Mayor Chris Canning. “We’re tired of it.”

Regardless of where people stand on the root causes of the fires, he said, there’s no denying that conditions in the region have changed dramatically.

“There is something different, there is something odd, there is something wrong, and it’s year after year after year,” he said.

Crews on Friday were also working to establish control lines above the community of Oakville and beefed up efforts to protect the hillside community of Angwin, where clearer skies have allowed helicopters to drop retardant, Brunton said.

Additionally, crews have been sent to the Highway 29 corridor on the floor of the Napa Valley, where anticipated wind gusts from the north could blow embers onto dry vegetation.

“Our fuels are extremely receptive to any ignition source whatsoever,” Brunton said. “It won’t take much for any ignition source to get to any of the vegetation.”

The Glass Fire, which erupted during a high-wind event on Sunday, has destroyed more than 400 homes and commercial buildings across both counties — including 153 single-family residences in Napa County and 67 in Sonoma County — and continued to threaten more than 28,800 others. No deaths or major injuries have been reported so far.

About 80,000 people were under evacuation orders, which were expanded on Thursday.

Fire and public safety officials warned that more evacuations are possible, and asked residents to remain vigilant, stay out of evacuation zones and stop demanding that officers let them back into off-limit neighborhoods.


The National Weather Service’s red flag warning of gusts of up to 30 mph and hot, dry air, remains in effect through early Saturday morning for the North Bay mountains. It also covers the East Bay Hills and Diablo Range, the Santa Cruz mountains and Los Padres National Forest, where the Dolan Fire is burning.

If firefighters can keep the flames at bay through the wind event, there’s a good chance they’ll be able to make steady progress containing the fire next week, said Cal Fire Incident Commander Billy See.

“We’re looking forward to decreased winds, decreased temperatures, increased humidities,” he said, “which will give our firefighters and our boots on the ground a fighting chance to gain additional perimeter control and start to bring some normalcy back to these impacted areas and get people back home where they belong.”

The Glass Fire is one of 23 wildfires currently burning across California, and among the more than 8,200 that have burned this year.

The state is poised to hit a grim milestone: 4 million acres charred this year so far, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. The wildfires have already killed 30 people and incinerated hundreds of homes in what is already the worst fire season on record. Virtually all the damage has been done since mid-August, when five of the six largest fires in state history erupted after a major a series of lightning strikes.

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“It’s likely that over the next day or two we will crest the 4-million-acre mark. The biggest year before this year was 1.54 million,” Cal Fire Chief Thom Porter said. “We are dwarfing that previous record and we have a lot of season left to go.”

Numerous studies have linked bigger wildfires in America to climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Scientists say climate change has made California much drier, resulting in much more flammable trees and other vegetation.

Wildfire Resources

Gov. Gavin Newsom toured fire-ravaged Napa County on Thursday and said the state was putting “all we have in terms of resources” into firefighting, particularly over the 36 hours of the windy period.

“I’ve got four young kids in elementary school and I can’t imagine for the children and parents, the families, that may be seeing these images, what’s going through your minds,” Newsom said, standing in front of a burned-out elementary school building.

“We’re in it for the long haul. We’re not just here for a moment. We’re here to rebuild and to reimagine your school,” he said, adding: “We have your backs.”

The Glass Fire is the fourth major blaze in the region in three years — burning in between the scars of previous blazes — and comes just ahead of the third anniversary of the 2017 Tubbs Fire which killed 22 people.

Newsom said people there have been “torn asunder by wildfires seemingly every single year, this drumbeat, where people are exhausted, concerned, anxious about their fate and their future.”

In Shasta County about 150 miles to the north, the Zogg Fire — which also erupted during Sunday’s high winds and grew quickly — has killed four people.

The Shasta County Sheriff’s office released two of their names Thursday: Karin King, 79, who was found on the road where the fire started, and Kenneth Vossen, 52, who suffered serious burns and later died in a hospital. Both were from the small town of Igo.

The fire had burned some 56,000 acres and destroyed 159 buildings, about half of them homes. By Friday morning, it was 46% contained.

The weekend was expected to usher in some cooling — or at least less intense heat — and long-range forecast models hinted at the possibility of rain.

Hurricane Marie, spinning in the Pacific southwest of Baja California, was expected to weaken by the middle of next week but leftover tropical moisture may be pulled northward and bring “impressive rainfall” to Northern California, forecasters said.

“Obviously a forecast at over 180+ hours out will change a lot, but confidence is increasing for at least some wet weather late next week,” the National Weather Service’s San Francisco Bay Area office said.

Latest Evacuation Information

  • Santa Rosa Evacuation Information: here and here

Latest Evacuation Center Information

Road Closures Information:

Animal Evacuations Center(s)

This story includes additional reporting from KQED’s Alex Emslie and the Associated Press.

Tell us: What do you want to know about wildfire evacuations during a pandemic?

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