California Fires Affected Napa Valley Again

Every bit the devastating Glass Burn down ripped through the Napa Valley in October 2020, a state investigator made an unusual motility: He ordered all the private firefighters who'd been hired by wineries and other wealthy interests in the surface area to pull into a dirt lot next to the St. Helena Reservoir.

Someone, the investigator suspected, had intentionally ignited what is known as a "backlash." The defensive bonfire — a potential criminal offence — had burned out of command, setting off spot fires and burning into at to the lowest degree two vineyards, according to records obtained this calendar month by The Chronicle.

The people summoned to the lot on the west side of the famed valley were part of a grouping that is becoming a bigger function of the wildfire crisis in California. Every bit authorities resource accept been stretched sparse, insurance companies, moneyed landowners, wineries and even Lake Tahoe ski resorts have turned to private crews to shield their properties.

Merely those crews aren't allowed to light fires or to operate in evacuation zones without permission. Their role past police force is to primarily focus on what is known as pre-fire handling of the landscape.

And so, every bit it unfolded, the Napa case highlighted the growing tensions between agencies similar Cal Fire, whose resources have been stretched by the catastrophic burns of recent years, and independent crews who officials say can obstruct firefighters, cause damage and take a chance lives.

The unusual incident would come to involve a U.Southward. congressman who notified Cal Burn down afterward he saw what he believed was a private coiffure lighting a backfire; a large winemaker that deployed a modest army of firefighters, including the one accused of wrongdoing; and neighboring wineries whose vineyards were damaged.

"Private firefighters' specific role should be nothing but defensive," said Jack Piccinini, a retired Santa Rosa firefighter of four decades who reviewed documents related to the Napa example for The Chronicle. "This is exactly what we fear with private and insurance firefighters."

On the 24-hour interval of the alleged backfire, the state investigator, Cal Fire Capt. Gary Uboldi, tore off pieces of paper and handed them out in the lot as smoke choked the hot fall air. Write downwards what you recall happening today, he told members of the one-half-dozen or so crews, and what y'all may know almost an unauthorized burn along narrow and winding Spring Mountain Road.

It would be the start of an investigation that, according to the documents The Relate received through California's public records constabulary, led Uboldi and his team to recommend 13 criminal counts — including arson, trespassing and setting an illegal backlash — against the possessor of Bella Wildfire & Forestry Inc., a individual coiffure based in Placer Canton that was working for a winery.

The owner's "actions and decision to conduct an unapproved backfiring operation during the incident violated several country laws, department policy, industry practices, and showed total disregard for the life safety of the citizens and assigned fire personnel on the Glass Fire," Uboldi wrote in a 41-page report.

The backlash burned a couple hundred feet of guard rail and spotted across the route into private wineries. Firefighters battling the Drinking glass Fire on the ground and in the air had to be redirected to extinguish it.

In the terminate, though, the case fell apart.

After Napa County prosecutors received the charging recommendations in March, their arson unit spent 6 months investigating before declining to file charges due to "insufficient evidence," said Assistant Commune Chaser Paul Gero. He said it was difficult to prove who started the burn down.

Reached last week by telephone and email, the visitor owner, Ryan Bellanca, said his crew had not ignited a backfire on the day in question and had really saved many homes and businesses.

"Who permit 30-plus wineries burn cause they were so spread sparse and couldn't advance quick enough?" he asked, referring to Cal Fire.

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The Drinking glass Fire erupted Sept. 27, 2020, among vineyards in the rolling hills of Napa Canton. To this day, its cause is non known.

Over three weeks, the fire spread into Sonoma County and burned more 67,000 acres, destroying more than i,500 structures, including the Chateau Boswell winery nigh St. Helena and the Castello di Amorosa winery near Calistoga, which lost $v million worth of wine.

More than 2,000 firefighters battled the bonfire, among them private crews hired by wineries, property owners and insurance companies to aid the country's overwhelmed firefighting force amid a historic fire season.

On Oct. 2, an unburned two,700-acre island only west of downtown St. Helena, bisected by Spring Mountain Road, became a priority in the firefight. Temperatures in the area reached the mid-90s that day and winds blew ten to xv mph.

Jackson Family Wines' Lokoya Winery was prepared. The company earlier that year had hired Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression Inc. of Chico to provide vegetation management, training and staffed engines in the event of a wildfire, according to the Cal Fire report. With the Drinking glass Fire encroaching on the properties, Firestorm had subcontracted work out to Bella.

Bella, a pocket-sized performance out of Weimar in the Sierra foothills, opened in 2008. The company specializes in fighting and preventing wildfires, doing prescribed burns and creating defensible space around backdrop.

Companies like Bella are proliferating. The National Wildfire Suppression Association, a trade grouping that oversees more than 300 private wildland fire services contractors, has trained more than 30,000 firefighters in the industry and repeatedly defends their work. A decade ago, the organization had less than 200 represented companies.

The night Bella arrived, Bellanca told The Relate, his crew worked with a land strike squad assigned to the Glass Fire and had full advice with incident commanders. He said they held the fire from descending off a ridge and lit a backfire "to stop the flaming front from impacting our clients buildings," but asserted that state firefighters were in accuse of the operation.

Officials at Cal Fire's headquarters and its Sonoma-Napa Unit did not respond to requests to annotate.

At eight a.grand. on Oct. 2, Bellanca said, the land firefighters left "and nosotros were left to hold the mountain until 11 a.m."

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It was a busy day for a small network of private firefighters working to protect some of Jackson'southward six vineyards in Napa Canton, as the Drinking glass Burn down had devoured much of the w side of the valley. Some cleared a fallen tree from a roadway, while others prepped a house and widened roads.

Around 9 a.m. that day, Brad Onorato picked up Rep. Mike Thompson and his wife from their St. Helena home to drive them to a Glass Burn briefing in Santa Rosa. Information technology had been a cluttered week for the Thompsons. On the starting time day of the blaze, the congressman's wife evacuated their abode and slept in her auto in Napa before Thompson flew out the next morning from Washington, D.C., to join her.

Onorato, Thompson's deputy principal of staff, described the bulldoze up Spring Mountain Road in a one-page statement to Cal Fire investigators. He said that as he drove westbound, and every bit the route flattened out, they hit a thick plume of fume.

"As the fume cleared a flake, I observed several men on the south side of the road. I of them was pouring flames out of a can over the guardrail," Onorato wrote. "I was a bit confused because these gentlemen did not announced to be firefighters. The Congressman told me it was conspicuously a private fire crew probably hired by an insurance company."

Onorato wrote that he saw a man in a red shirt and brown pants operating the drip torch and placing it in a truck. Cal Fire indicated in its report that Onorato identified Bellanca as that man.

The congressman had a similar recollection. He told Uboldi that, as they passed the upper gate to Keenan Winery, they were stopped by a man in firefighter gear standing near a Bella truck. With flames on both sides of the route, the congressman said he rolled down his window to ask what was happening, with the man responding that they were trying to catch a spot burn down. He said the human being denied they had been doing a backfire.

A drip torch on the bumper of a Bella Wildfire & Forestry burn down truck. Cal Fire redacted the photo, which was function of its investigation into an illegal backfire, to obscure the license plate.

Provided by Cal Fire

He too spotted a drip torch on the guard rail. In a phone interview with The Chronicle, the congressman said he was so bothered by what he saw that he reached out to Cal Fire.

"It didn't strike me equally the usual operating procedure for private firefighters," Thompson said.

Bellanca questioned the witness accounts after reviewing the Cal Fire report.

"Folks saw me light a backfire?" Bellanca wrote in an email to The Chronicle. "That's wild cause I idea the unabridged expanse was evacuated? How could we light a backfire when the flaming front impacted the ridge the night before and was already burning at us that morning from the east."

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Napa and Sonoma County burn officials look over maps along Leap Mountain Road in St. Helena after a private firefighter crew allegedly lost command of an unauthorized backfire that spread in an expanse well-nigh them in October 2020.

Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle 2020

Around noon on Oct. two, Uboldi was at the St. Helena Cal Fire station making telephone calls in an effort to determine the cause of the bigger Glass Fire. Upon hearing reports of an unauthorized backfire, he jumped in his truck and drove south, past storied wineries, rise 2,000 anxiety higher up the valley.

He stopped and directed private burn companies he encountered to meet at the reservoir dirt lot, across the street from Bound Mountain Winery. Nigh told him they worked for Jackson. Only when the investigator told them to write down what they could recall nearly the declared backlash, they all cooperated — except one.

The unabridged Bella crew became "unreceptive and uncooperative," Uboldi wrote. They refused to requite their names, lawyered up and recorded him with their phones. Members of Bella, records testify, each handed back notes refusing to make a argument, equally one of them wrote, "under duress and intimidation of Cal Burn."

When asked if his coiffure refused to talk to investigators, Bellanca said, "you lot're damn correct!" He told The Chronicle, "Once they approached my battalion chief and got in his confront we started recording them. They were way out of line and we fabricated sure to document for our own protection from at that place."

A fallen guardrail with burn damage almost the origin of an alleged backfire gear up forth Spring Mountain Road during the 2020 Drinking glass Burn down in St. Helena.

Stephen Lam/The Chronicle

But other witnesses pointed fingers at Bellanca'southward company. A crew member for Firestorm, Bob Alvarez, told Uboldi he saw Bella personnel conducting a backlash forth a driveway. He said he thought they were working with Cal Fire, according to the state report.

Michael Howard of San Diego County-based Capstone Fire and Safe Management told Uboldi, according to the report, that Bella coiffure members had told him they had "lost a backfiring operation along Leap Mountain Road."

Capt. Matt Churchman of the American Canyon Burn Protection Commune said his engine had been assigned structure defense. When his crew arrived, he told Uboldi, they institute 15 to 20 individual firefighters prepping the properties' structures for a backfiring operation. Churchman told the crew to stop the firing operation, co-ordinate to the report.

Churchman wrote in a note to Uboldi that the coiffure dominate in charge of the firing operation had not notified incident command and wasn't on radio communications with other firefighters. "A firewoman on the crew in the ruby-red shirt stated they had put burn on the footing earlier and that he was inside his rights as a property rep to do so," he wrote.

As he wrapped upwards his interviews, Uboldi told the Bella employees he would cite them for entering an evacuated zone. While writing them up, "they connected to verbally berate my partners and I," Uboldi wrote.

Bellanca said his team was removed from the area.

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Statements by Bella Wildfire & Forestry firefighters responding to inquiries by Cal Burn down.

Cal Fire

Three days after his field interviews, on Oct. v, Uboldi met with Firestorm President and Operations Manager Jess Wills in St. Helena. Wills, who also serves as treasurer and secretarial assistant on the private firefighters' trade association board, said in that location had been no prior word of backfiring or rules of engagement betwixt his visitor and Bella, according to the land study.

Wills said Bella had been backfiring along a downhill stretch of land belonging to their clients, but Uboldi said Jackson was farther s. Uboldi said he saw evidence the backfire was on Keenan Winery country.

Wills did not return a request for annotate.

In his report, Uboldi said Keenan Winery and neighboring Kieu Hoang Winery lost "land and vegetation" due to the illegal backfire.

A Jackson Family Wines spokesperson, Sean Carroll, said the company was not part of whatever Cal Burn down investigation. In the land report, Uboldi said he interviewed the corporate security director at Jackson and adamant the company "was uninvolved and unaware of the backfiring incident which had occurred."

After this article was initially published online, another Jackson spokesperson, Kristen Reitzell, said the visitor "did not set up any backfires or approve any backfires to be gear up during the Drinking glass Fire. ... Jackson Family Wines works collaboratively with all fire agencies — including Cal Burn down — in multiple counties. We hold any and all contractors we work with to that same standard of cooperation."

A twelvemonth later, signs of the alleged backlash forth Spring Mountain Road are still apparent. The silver guardrail lays flat on the shoulder of the route with charred wooden posts buried beneath. Melted sign posts curve awkwardly above the wooded slope where investigators say the private firefighters attempted to fire the brush to create a wider buffer around their clients' vineyards.

Reilly Keenan, whose granddaddy bought the vineyards in 1974, is all the same aroused almost the turn of events. He said he initially evacuated the day the fire started, but returned a few days before the alleged backfire to protect his family and co-workers' homes on their belongings.

Matt Gardner, full general manager of Keenan Winery, walks near a loma total of vines equally he recounts the 2020 Glass Burn down in St. Helena.

Stephen Lam/The Chronicle

Keenan recalled when the fire, "seemingly out of nowhere," flashed above the winery's "upper bowl vineyard," below Bound Mount Road.

"It burned the entirety of the forest that buffers the vineyard from the road so exploded beyond the street and raced up the mountain above us," Keenan recalled. "Seemed similar it took the firefighters above and across the street from us past surprise based on the frantic yelling and repositioning of trucks and other assets that I witnessed. We had no idea backfires were being lit nearby or on our belongings."

Keenan said his family unit was "extremely lucky."

Editor's notation: This article was updated after it was initially published online.

Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Electronic mail: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni

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Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Napa-was-on-fire-A-winery-s-private-crew-was-16626998.php

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