Gov. Newsom visits Glass fire in Napa Valley, vows to increase funding to battle fires

DEER PARK — Grimly surveying the destruction left by the latest wildfire to rip through a California community, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed Thursday in Napa Valley to increase funding in his budget next year to both battle fires and reduce the explosive potential of the state’s dried-out woodlands before they burst into flames.

In a visit to Deer Park, a community in the hills north of St. Helena where the Glass fire destroyed homes and part of an elementary school earlier this week, Newsom acknowledged the relentless experience of wildfire for people across California. Many have lost homes, even more have been forced to evacuate and millions are living with unrelenting noxious smoke as 23 major wildfires burn across the state simultaneously.

The fires, he said, affirm his intent to commit more money in the coming year’s budget toward the state’s firefighting ranks. Although California employs the largest number of firefighters in the nation, it was still insufficient to handle the number of fires burning all at once, starting with a lightning siege in August.

“If this doesn’t give us the reason to go further,” Newsom said, trailing off as he surveyed the charred remains of Foothills Adventist Elementary School.

Newsom and Cal Fire Director Thom Porter met at the campus, a private elementary school that had resumed in-person classes about a week before the fires broke out and left portions of its campus charred rubble. They were joined by local elected leaders including Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, and Napa County Sheriff John Robertson.

“I’ve got four young kids in elementary school, and I can’t imagine for the parents what’s going on in their minds, with all the anxiety going into the school year, to see their precious school burned down,” Newsom said. “We have your backs.”

The discussion among leaders focused on how to use state money set aside for fire prevention projects, such as vegetation clearing, to make bigger impacts in the years ahead.

Thompson, whose district includes parts of Napa and Sonoma counties hit by fires repeatedly since 2017, suggested the state launch highly visible forest management projects in and around areas like Santa Rosa’s Oakmont community, which abuts Trione-Annadel State Park.

“That’s where we can make hay,” Porter agreed.

Porter pulled out a tactical map of the Glass fire and described the firefight ahead in Napa and Sonoma counties, where triple-digit temperatures and high winds were to arrive Thursday afternoon — a recipe for fire to advance and spread. The town of Angwin, east in the hills above the Napa Valley, was still threatened, and officials were concerned northwestern winds could push flames across firebreaks toward Kenwood in the Sonoma Valley.

So far this year, nearly 4 million acres have burned across the state, where officials have mustered an unprecedented 20,000 firefighters to the fire line at the peak so far this season. Newsom said the amount burned in the first nine months of 2020 has far exceeded the acreage burned by this time last year, about 158,000 acres.

Newsom said the state must first “deal with the immediate,” with fires currently burning, but also must channel more resources into forest management. He discussed millions of dollars the state has put toward clearing dense and unhealthy forests on both state and private lands.

In California, 57% of forestland is owned or maintained by the federal government. The state owns roughly 5% and the remainder is private property.

“We’ll continue our aggressive, without precedent, historic forest and vegetation management efforts (that) we’ve substantially increased in the last two years and we will increase them more into the coming years,” Newsom said.

President Donald Trump has blamed California's massive wildfires on poor forest management by the state, an issue that arose Tuesday during the first presidential debate.

“Do you believe that human pollution, gas, greenhouse gas emissions contributes to the global warming of the planet?" moderator Chris Wallace asked.

"I think a lot of things do but I think, to an extent, yes. I think, to an extent, yes. But I also think we have to do better management of our forests," Trump answered.

Trump said if the forests were cleaned, the annual wildfires in California wouldn't happen. Trump said he has been working with Newsom on the issue.

Newsom said he was glad California’s wildfire crisis had a cameo on the first night of the presidential debates. Standing in the rubble of a Napa County schoolyard Thursday, Newsom said he hoped it put the global predicament of a changing climate into the forefront of more people’s minds, if not Trump, whom he described as having “a different point of view than 98% of the world’s scientists.”

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.