Since 2017 wildfires have created a crisis of epic proportions for Napa County. Just last year the Hennessey/LNU and Glass Fires cost Napa County $3.7 billion in losses. As Winston Churchill said, âNever let a good crisis go to waste,â yet that is exactly whatâs happening.
Weâre just five months away from the beginning of the next fire season and nothing has been accomplished to mitigate these wildfires except talk. There is no leadership anywhere on the horizon. Not the Governor, not CalFire, not the Board of Supervisors.
Before the fires:The condition of our forests was and is one of benign neglect. Since 1904 when the Forest Service started suppressing wildfires our forests have become clogged with too many trees and brush, which then weakens our forests from too much competition and makes them more susceptible to fire, disease and drought.
At the time, Napa County Fire Chief Geoff Belyea remembers he believed there would never be another fire season like 2008.
But he thought the same after the Valley Fire in 2015, and again amid the Atlas and Tubbs fires in 2017. Asked if he now believed Napa County would see increasingly severe fire seasons going forward, Belyea paused.
âI donât know if you can say that we have seen the worst, but I donât know if you can say the worst is yet to come,â he said.
Itâs hard to speak in certain terms about what future fire seasons might bring for Napa County and the North Bay. What is for certain, experts say, is that warmer and drier conditions across California are giving way to wildfires more frequent, chaotic and destructive than ever before.
Christopher Thompson exited his Deer Park house at 3:50 a.m. on Sept. 27 and saw a fiery scene he had long imagined with dread â and had hoped to help prevent.
âWhen I stepped out of my house on the porch and saw those flames leaping from Bell Canyon reservoir (area), I knew my worst nightmare had come to fruition,â Thompson said.
The Deer Park firefighter and president of Napa Communities Firewise Foundation had worked unsuccessfully to obtain a $750,000 grant from Cal Fire for fuel management in Bell Canyon. Heâd wanted to thin out vegetation and improve legacy roads there.
Now the Glass Fire raged. Thompsonâs fire pager had alerted him.