Napa County fire with 'dangerous rate of spread' forces evacuations

SAN FRANCISCO — A fast-moving fire in Napa County on Sunday forced evacuations north of the town of St. Helena as large swaths of Northern California faced dangerous fire weather.

The Glass fire has burned 1,200 acres about four miles northwest of downtown St. Helena, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and was burning “with a dangerous rate of spread.”

Crews were dispatched to the vegetation fire at 3:50 a.m. PDT, and it quickly grew to 20 acres, said Tyree Zander, public information officer with Cal Fire’s Napa Lake Sonoma Unit.

“And then it went from 20 acres to about 50 acres within an hour, hour and a half,” he said. “And then from 50 acres to 800 acres within a four-hour period.”

Crews reported no containment as of Sunday afternoon as the fire continued to grow rapidly, burning about 400 more acres.

The fire was burning to the north and northeast through dry brush, running uphill as it was pushed by winds, Zander said.

“It’s rugged, steep terrain and limited access, and a lot of it is one-way-in, one-way-out type of roads,” Zander said, posing difficulties to both getting fire crews into the area and getting evacuees out.

The Napa County Sheriff’s Office ordered mandatory evacuations along a stretch of the storied Silverado Trail, known for its wineries. Evacuations were ordered between Pickett Road and Deer Park Road, and along all of Crystal Springs and North Fork Crystal Springs roads, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Evacuation orders also were issued for College Avenue from Howell Mountain Road to White Cottage Road, all of Freisen Drive and Lommel Road and all roads west of College Avenue and Friesen Drive to the Silverado Trail. Residents of neighboring areas were urged to sign up for Nixle alerts and to be prepared to evacuate if necessary.

The orders covered about 600 homes and an estimated 1,500 residents, said Janet Upton, public information officer for Napa County’s emergency operations center. An additional 1,400 homes, representing about 3,500 more people, were under evacuation warnings.

Adventist Health St. Helena hospital suspended operations and evacuated its patients due to the fire. “We’re in close communication with fire officials and began transferring some patients early this morning as a precaution,” Dr. Steven Herber, the hospital’s president, said in a statement.

Strike teams that included both ground and air ambulances took about 50 patients to other area hospitals, “out of an abundance of caution, knowing what we’ll be up against tonight,” when weather conditions are expected to deteriorate, Upton said.

The county, supported by the American Red Cross, opened an evacuation center at Crosswalk Community Church in Napa. The center wasn’t sheltering people due to the coronavirus outbreak, but evacuees could go there to be placed in area hotels. About 150 people had taken advantage of the service as of Sunday afternoon, Upton said.

“This emergency operation center’s been stood up for the covid response since March and we’ve been planning for what we call an incident within an incident, which is, for example, these wildfires,” Upton said. “And the planning’s paid off so we have the sheltering services in place to deal with basically wildfire in the time of covid.”