Glass fire burns 2,500 acres in Napa County; flames push west forcing Santa Rosa evacuations late Sunday

Wind-driven flames were burning on both sides of the Napa Valley late Sunday night, menacing the nation’s most expensive wine region and forcing evacuations all the way to the eastern edge of Santa Rosa as they threatened to burn over the slopes of Spring Mountain overnight into Sonoma County.

Flames racing toward Santa Rosa triggered a rapid succession of evacuation orders late Sunday night as emergency officials grew increasingly nervous the fire would spread through the hills along Los Alamos Road all the way to the eastern edge of the city.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic clogged Highway 12 at the eastern gateway to Santa Rosa as people fled, many with memories of the 2017 wildfires that killed 24 people and destroyed more than 5,300 homes in Sonoma County three years ago next week.

People living east of Calistoga Road, from Highway 12 to Hoyer Drive, and areas east and south of Highway 12 to roughly Pythian Road, including the Los Guilicos Juvenile Justice Center campus, were ordered around 10 p.m. Sunday to leave immediately. Shortly before 10:45 p.m., residents of Oakmont were ordered to evacuate.

Firefighters massed in east Santa Rosa late Sunday to defend the Skyhawk subdivision as flames burned toward the city. The flames were racing through an area that had not been burned in 2017, leaving a gap between the scars left by the Tubbs and Nuns fires.

Despite a furious assault from firefighters in the air and on the ground earlier in the day, a fire that erupted on the eastern rim of the Napa Valley early Sunday morning chewed through 2,500 acres in a little more than 15 hours and was burning out of control Sunday night.

The Glass fire — the second in six weeks to fill the skies of Napa Valley with acrid smoke in the middle of a hellish grape harvest bedeviled by pandemic and fire — burned numerous structures and forced at least 5,000 people in Napa County alone to evacuate their homes or prepare to leave at a moment’s notice.

The fire broke out at 3:50 a.m. Sunday in the hills on the eastern side of the valley between St. Helena and Calistoga, above the Silverado Trail that carries thousands of tourists every weekend to sample wines grown in vineyards that sell for as much as $1 million an acre.

Late Sunday night, two fires were burning on the western side of the Napa Valley, on the slopes of Spring Mountain above St. Helena. It was not immediately clear whether they were ignited by embers driven over the valley by gusty winds, or entirely new fires.

Fearing the fires would push to the west, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office ordered residents near St. Helena and Los Alamos roads to evacuate shortly before 8:30 p.m. An hour later, Sonoma County expanded evacuation orders all the way to the eastern edge of Santa Rosa, ordering people who live in the hills northeast of Highway 12 to leave immediately.

The two fires — dubbed the Shady and Boysen fires — burning on the western side of the Napa Valley, west of Highway 128 near Bothe-Napa Valley State Park, also threatened to push east down toward St. Helena.

On the east side of the Napa Valley, the tiny communities of Deer Park and Angwin were in the path of the Glass fire, as was the Adventist St. Helena Hospital, long-since evacuated. Guests at the Meadowood Resort, a five-star luxury resort and spa above Silverado Trail, were also ordered to leave.

“It’s terrible,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, whose wife works at the hospital. “It’s a phone call you never want to receive. There are many people who are going to be harmed. … It’s just a tragedy.”

The cause of the Glass fire, which broke out near the 200 block of North Fork Crystal Springs Road, was not immediately known.

The flames were confronted on the ground by a force of 865 firefighters and bombed from the air by a fleet of aircraft, including the Cal Fire 747 Global Supertanker.

Thompson planned to fly back from Washington, D.C., at 7 a.m. Monday – the first plane he could catch – to begin assessing damage. Officials on the ground said the worst was yet to come.

Strong offshore winds were expected to reach as high as 55 mph among the highest peaks of the Vaca Range, where the fire was burning along the eastern flank of the Napa Valley. Even the 20 mph to 30 mph sustained winds should be enough to drive what firefighters called “explosive, dangerous growth” early Sunday morning.

Napa County emergency officials cleared a wide berth in early evacuations, hopeful to not have to roust residents from sleep in the middle of the night, a tactic that proved deadly when the Tubbs fire roared into Sonoma County from Napa County three years ago.

The winds this weekend weren’t expected to hit the “hurricane force” mark set in October 2017, but bone dry vegetation still put Napa leaders on high alert.

Humidity levels in elevations in the fire area were as low as 0% — and kiln-dried wood is at 9%, said Janet Upton, spokeswoman for the Napa County Office of Emergency Services. “That factor alone, without the winds, would drive dangerous fire behavior,” she said.

The conditions prompted a red flag warning that took effect Saturday night, and will stretch to 9 p.m. Monday at least. By 4 a.m. Sunday, Pacific Gas and Electric had already cut power to 11,000 customers, and turned out the lights on 54,000 more spanning 16 counties by 8 p.m. to ensure the utility’s equipment didn’t spark fires amid the dangerous conditions.

Napa County customers were among those impacted. Officials in a news conference late Sunday said the utility received a request to power down some lines in Napa County “to help with firefighting.”

PG&E did not respond to multiple phone calls seeking information about the timing and cause of power outages in Napa County, as well as the number of people and businesses unplugged.

The Glass fire also contributed to increased smoke in the region, prompting the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to extend its Spare the Air Alert into Monday. The warning, which bans wood burning and encourages residents to avoid unnecessary travel, was first issued Saturday, and hits an area that has spent most of the past six weeks enveloped in smoke.

The region was already primed for poor air quality, according to forecasts posted Saturday, which predicted wildfire smoke from the lightning-sparked August Complex fire in Mendocino County would combine with high temperatures and weekend vehicle traffic to cause unhealthy smog or ozone.

The Glass fire is just the latest wildland fire North Bay leaders have had to grapple with during this fire season, which featured a glut of lightning-sparked fires in Sonoma and Napa counties and beyond, the state’s largest fire – in Mendocino County – and now this.

The worst of the winds – and weather – was yet to come, National Weather Service meteorologist Brayden Murdock said. Temperatures were expected to remain high, into the 70s, overnight Sunday and would combine with winds expected to reach their peak between midnight and 6 a.m.

“It’s not a good time,” Murdock said. “The major concern is humidity recovery, and unfortunately it doesn’t look like we’re going to see any recovery.”

Firefighters through Sunday afternoon had been able to keep the blaze at bay along the hills and prevented it from encroaching to notable wineries along the Silverado Trail such as Rombauer Estates, Duckhorn Vineyards and the Davis Estate, where the edge of the fire lingered on a hill about 100 yards above the winery.

By nightfall, though, as winds increased, and a fresh start appeared on the west side of the Napa Valley, the unknown lurked.

The fire comes as growers try to wrap up the 2020 grape harvest, with much of the valley’s most expensive grapes, cabernet sauvignon, the last to be crushed. And it creates another challenge to attract visitors to the region’s critical tourism sector already hobbled by COVID-19-related shutdowns.

On Sunday afternoon along Highway 29, residents parked their cars alongside the main Napa County thoroughfare to capture photos and videos of the Glass fire. Many stopped in front of the iconic Napa Valley sign that welcomes guests “to this world famous wine growing region.”

By nightfall, the only cars left were those fleeing the flames. Thompson, whose son is a Napa County Sheriff’s deputy, and who has many friends in the area, said this most recent blow to his 5th Congressional District, is tough to swallow.

“From the folks that I’ve talked to, I don’t think I’m the only one who wishes we could get 2020 behind us,” Thompson said. “We’ve been through a lot. It’s been a terrible, terrible year.”