Glass fire exacts heavy toll in northern Napa Valley as more residents forced to flee

Mark and Suzanne Roomian can’t escape the trauma of wildfires in Napa Valley.

The couple moved from Deer Park in 2017 to a home across the valley in St. Helena. On Tuesday, both communities were under mandatory evacuation orders as the Glass fire burned out of control in mountains on both sides of northern Napa Valley.

Living temporarily in a hotel, the couple learned Tuesday that their former Deer Park home was destroyed in the blaze.

“I feel like we all have low-grade PTSD,” Suzanne Roomian, a legal assistant, said. “We speak loudly. We’re more anxious. It runs through everything since our first fire in 2017.”

Napa Valley was under siege again Tuesday, with rampant wildfire forcing more evacuations of entire communities ― including Angwin for the second time in a month. The order came a day after the entire city of Calistoga, population 5,000, was ordered to evacuate.

Normally bustling this time of year with the grape harvest and tourists eager to sample the fall season, northern Napa Valley was so empty Tuesday that the sound of trees crackling with flames and falling over in forests could be heard over long distances.

A blaze in a forest on the edge of a vineyard just east of Calistoga city limits burned wildly Tuesday morning before running out of ground at a dirt road. Nearby, a weary firefighting crew from the city of Piedmont kept watch to make sure the flames did not threaten hillside homes.

Authorities ordered the new evacuations over concerns the fire would back down into more settled areas amid a reversal in winds, which gusted out of the west.

Late Tuesday, they expanded those orders to take in a wider swath of the mountains and canyons north and west of Calistoga. The affected area covered residents west of Highway 29 and along Highway 128 to the Napa-Sonoma county line.

Flames posed “an imminent danger” to residents in the area, said Erick Hernandez, a Cal Fire spokesman. Southwest of Highway 128, the fire was nearing Petrified Forest Road, a corridor leading into Sonoma County.

To the south, in the mountainous terrain northeast of Angwin, helicopters dumped water on flames while ground crews tamped down hot spots and bulldozed firebreaks.

The seasonal pattern has repeated itself since October 2017, when the Tubbs, Nuns and Atlas fires burned a combined 144,428 acres and destroyed more than 7,700 structures in Sonoma and Napa counties, killing 31 people.

The more recent LNU Lightning Complex, a series of fires which broke out Aug. 17, including the Hennessey, Gamble, Spanish and Markley fires in Napa County, has consumed more than 363,000 across five counties. It has yet to be fully contained.

Valerie Dalton, a resident of Deer Park just below Angwin, had yet to unpack her Toyota SUV after fleeing her home of 45 years during that inferno when she was startled awake before dawn Sunday by a sheriff’s deputy blaring a “hi-lo” siren, the signal to get out fast.

Remarkably, Dalton’s home is untouched after the fire roared through the community, causing widespread destruction. But several of her neighbors’ homes have been completely leveled.

“I’ve always, for the time I’ve been there, said this is my safe place,” Dalton, 68, said Tuesday from her daughter’s home in Napa. “I’m hesitating as to whether I’m going to feel safe there again.”

But the tug of home is strong. Shari Costanzo, Dalton’s daughter, described learning how to ride a bike and a horse for the first time on the property. Three children were raised there. Several of the family’s pets are buried in the yard.

“It’s just a house, but it sure has a ton of memories,” Costanzo said.

Countywide, at least 52 homes have been destroyed, though Napa-based officials indicated that is likely outdated. In Deer Park alone, the losses may be in the dozens.

Along with sadness and loss, there also is a palpable sense of anger and frustration in northern Napa Valley over the belief that more could be done to prevent wildfires or put them out once they start.

In Angwin, 64-year-old Harrison Hood expressed dismay over being forced to leave his home for the second time in a month.

“It feels a little controlling, actually,” the local builder said. “They shut off your power, you have no cell (service) and then no water pressure, so they don’t let you defend your home. That’s a drag.”

David Wesner, a general engineering contractor who has lived in Angwin for 21 years, said he wished for fewer environmental laws “so people could do something before this happens.”

No cause has been given for the Glass fire, though more than 90% of wildfires are sparked by people ― and California’s warming climate is stoking both their increasing frequency and devastating toll.

Wesner sported a ball cap for the Howell Mountain Fire Posse, an ad-hoc community group that formed to battle the LNU Lightning Complex fires. The group bulldozed firebreaks in the mountains where firefighters on Tuesday worked the Glass fire.

As he spoke, Wesner hammered away smoldering bark from a magnificent redwood tree in Valerie Dalton’s backyard to try and prevent the tree from burning through and collapsing onto the house. Wesner is a longtime friend of the family.

But there’s only so much can-do spirit can accomplish in the face of extreme blazes that strain California’s army of firefighters, the world’s largest. Once evacuation orders are lifted, blackened hillsides will once again stand in place of once-verdant slopes in a valley famously described as America’s Eden.

Of immediate concern, the Glass fire as of Tuesday night still had zero containment. One out-of-area firefighter predicted he wouldn’t be home for another 14 days.

The Roomians’ temporary shelter at a Yountville hotel is costing them $159 a night, which the couple consider a bargain versus the normal rate of $372. They are hoping their insurance company will pick up the tab.

On a brief visit to their St. Helena home to retrieve medications for a relative, Mark Roomian, a sales manager at V. Sattui Winery, they discovered that someone had broken into the garage and stolen beer and possibly some tools. The felt outrage, along with all the other emotions of living with wildfires.

And yet, for all their trauma and dislocation, the couple say they are not yet ready to give up on Napa Valley.

“I think if you make a move like that in an anxious state, it comes back to you,” Suzanne said, looking up Tuesday from a police roadblock toward the Deer Park community, where their former life is now in ruins.