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EVACUATIONS » GLASS FIRE
Napa Valley blaze
threatens Santa Rosa
A DC-10 air tanker drops retardant on the left flank of the Glass fire, which was moving toward Bell Hill reservoir, spotting over Crystal Springs
Road and running towards Silverado Trail on Sunday. The blazes forced evacuations to the eastern edge of Santa Rosa on Sunday night.
Winds prompt
orders to leave
up to eastern
edge of city
By TYLER SILVY
AND BILL SWINDELL
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
W
ind-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 threat-
ened 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 peo-
ple 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. Sun-
day to leave immediately. Short-
ly before 10:45 p.m., residents of
Oakmont were ordered to evacu-
ate.
Firefighters massed in east
Santa Rosa late Sunday to de-
fend 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
TURN TO FIRE » PAGE A6
Advice B13 Crossword B13
Classified A6 Editorial A8
Comics B12 Horoscopes B11
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 • SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA • PRESSDEMOCRAT.COM
A home burns in the Glass fire Sunday near St. Helena.
Silverado Trail wineries in Napa Valley
threatened during key part of harvest
By BILL SWINDELL
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
CALISTOGA — The Silver-
ado Trail on the last Sunday
in September would typically
be a place where well-heeled
tourists would enjoy late sea-
son wine tastings and harvest
crews would be readying for
the picks of Napa Valley’s king
fruit, cabernet sauvignon.
But on this Sunday there
was none of it along the north
end of the trail, bordering the
hills of the Vaca Range. By
nightfall, the Glass fire was
perilously close to prime vine-
yards.
Fire trucks sped along the
Legal notices B4 Movies B10
Lotto A2 People B13
Nation-World B1 Sports B5
roadway and helicopters
buzzed overhead. The pesky
fire triggered a large billow of
smoke over a swath of prime
vineyard acreage at the most
inopportune time.
Starting before dawn and
until late Sunday afternoon,
firefighters were able to keep
the blaze at bay along the
hills. They prevented it from
encroaching notable wineries
along the Silverado Trail, such
as Rombauer Estates, Duck-
horn Vineyards and the Davis
Estate, where the edge of the
fire lingered on a hill about 100
yards above the winery.
However, by 7:30 p.m. wind
gusts pushed flames down the
TIKTOK REPRIEVE: Judge delays Trump’s ban
on downloading the video app, giving room
for company to transfer to US owners / B1
SAN FRANCISCO
TRIUMPHANT »
Niners line full
of substitutes
runs roughshod
over Giants in
36-9 victory. B5
WINNER OF THE 2018 PULITZER PRIZE
PHOTOS BY KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
mountain ridges toward the
trail. Glass Mountain Road
was a sea of orange. Fire-
fighters worked feverishly as
flames approached Duckhorn
and Boeschen Vineyards.
During the day, in front of
the Davis Estate, Doug Grand-
bois of Cal Fire was monitor-
ing a crew of 50 firefighters
along the ridge who were ac-
companied by bulldozers to
create fire breaks to protect
the winery. Helicopters, which
dangled large buckets from a
line, would swoop over near-
by and douse hot spots. They
would then fly to nearby ponds
TURN TO WINERIES » PAGE A7
SANTA ROSA
High 99, Low 55
THE WEATHER, B14
Donald Trump
Trump
dodged
income
taxes
Report: Businesses said
they were losing money
over past two decades
By DAVID A. FAHRENTHOLD
AND YEGANEH TORBATI
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON — President
Donald Trump paid $750 in fed-
eral income taxes in 2016 and the
same amount in 2017, and paid
no taxes at all in several previous
years, largely because his busi-
ness empire has reported losing
more money than it made, accord-
ing to a new report in The New
York Times.
In a story 18 KEY
posted Sunday INSIGHTS
afternoon, The Important things
Times said it to take away
had obtained from the New
tax-return data York Times
for Trump and report / B3
his businesses
covering much of the last two
decades. Trump has refused to
release his tax returns — making
him the only president in recent
history to do so — and he went
to the Supreme Court earlier
this year to stop Congress and
the Manhattan District Attorney
from accessing them.
The Times story shows what
Trump would not: that the busi-
ness empire he brags about has
struggled, with keystone proper-
ties such as the president’s Doral
resort and his District of Colum-
bia hotel steadily losing money.
And that, in the next few years,
TURN TO TRUMP » PAGE A2
ELECTION 2020
Biden
may have
debate
advantage
By JUSTIN SINK
AND TYLER PAGER
BLOOMBERG NEWS SERVICE
Democrat Joe Biden takes the
stage at the first presidential
debate of 2020 on Tuesday star-
ing at an opponent, in President
Donald Trump, who has unwit-
tingly done him a big favor —
lowered expectations for Biden’s
performance.
The president has spent
months painting Biden as
sleepy, doddering and senile,
a move that may have lowered
the bar for Biden’s performance
in the eyes of many voters who
will be seeing him on stage in
Cleveland for the first time since
the Democratic convention.
An even passable perfor-
mance by the former vice presi-
dent might come off looking like
a win in a debate that has tak-
en on outsize importance after
covid-19 limited the candidates’
TURN TO DEBATE » PAGE A2
©2020
The Press
Democrat
A6 THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

FIRE
CONTINUED FROM A1
fires.
Despite a furious assault
from firefighters in the air
and on the ground earlier
in the day, a fire that erupt-
ed 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 burn-
ing out of control Sunday
night.
The Glass fire — the sec-
ond 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 Cal-
istoga, above the Silverado
Trail that carries thousands
of tourists every weekend to
sample wines grown in vine-
yards that sell for as much PHOTOS BY KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

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 imme-
diately clear whether they
were ignited by embers driv-
en over the valley by gusty
winds, or entirely new fires.
Fearing the fires would
push to the west, Sonoma
County Sheriff’s Office or-
dered residents near St. Hel-
ena and Los Alamos roads to
evacuate shortly before 8:30
p.m. An hour later, Sonoma
County expanded evacua-
tion orders all the way to the
eastern edge of Santa Rosa,
ordering people who live in
the hills northeast of High-
way 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 com-
munities of Deer Park and
Angwin were in the path
of the Glass fire, as was the
Adventist St. Helena Hos-
pital, long-since evacuated.
Guests at the Meadowood
Resort, a five-star luxury re-
sort 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 re-
ceive. 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
A firefighter battles the Glass fire Sunday night near St. Helena. The blaze had spread to 2,500 acres by the evening and threatened rapid expansion.
the 200 block of North Fork
Crystal Springs Road, was
not immediately known.
The flames were con-
fronted 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 Su-
pertanker.
Thompson planned to fly
back from Washington, D.C.,
at 7 a.m. Monday — the first
plane he could catch — to
begin assessing damage. Of-
ficials 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 fire-
fighters called “explosive,
dangerous growth” early
Sunday morning.
Napa County emergen-
cy 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 eleva-
tions 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
Cal Fire firefighters remove a tree branch that fell on a Schell Vista engine on Crystal Springs
Road Sunday near St. Helena.
factor alone, without the
winds, would drive danger-
ous 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 condi-
tions.
Napa County customers
were among those impacted.
Officials in a news confer-
ence 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 tim-
ing and cause of power out-
ages in Napa County, as well
as the number of people and
businesses unplugged.
The Glass fire also con-
tributed to increased smoke
in the region, prompting the
Bay Area Air Quality Man-
agement District to extend
its Spare the Air Alert into
Monday.
The warning, which bans
wood burning and encour-
ages residents to avoid un-
necessary 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 post-
ed Saturday, which predict-
ed wildfire smoke from the
lightning-sparked August
Complex fire in Mendoci-
no 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 Men-
docino County — and now
this.
The worst of the winds
— and weather — was yet
to come, National Weath-
er Service meteorologist
Brayden Murdock said.
Temperatures were expect-
ed 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 recov-
ery, and unfortunately it
doesn’t look like we’re going
to see any recovery.”
Firefighters through Sun-
day 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 Es-
tates, 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 grow-
ers try to wrap up the 2020
grape harvest, with much
of the valley’s most expen-
sive grapes, cabernet sauvi-
gnon, the last to be crushed.
And it creates another chal-
lenge to attract visitors to
the region’s critical tour-
ism sector already hobbled
by COVID-19-related shut-
downs.
On Sunday afternoon
along Highway 29, residents
parked their cars alongside
the main Napa County thor-
oughfare 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 Sher-
iff’s deputy, and who has
many friends in the area,
said this most recent blow
to his 5th Congressional Dis-
trict, 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.”

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THE PRESS DEMOCRAT • MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 A7

WINERIES “It’s kind of like eating

CONTINUED FROM A1
to pick up more water and
circle back in a loop.
The terrain above Davis
Estate was so steep bull-
dozers could not get to
certain areas, so Cal Fire
had to rely on firefighters
on the ground working in
heat that approached 100
degrees.
“I’m just standing here
as a lookout, so in case
something stupid happens
here that they don’t burn
up my crews,” Grandbois
said.
The big concern was
wind direction. “I just
don’t want them to commit
too far in without having
secured (an escape) behind
them,” he said. “If (the
wind) pushes it downhill,
we will just change tactics
… that’s the last resort at
the moment.”
Grandbois was encour-
aged the helicopters were
able to get out early in the
morning to start fighting
the fire that ignited about
4 a.m., and the fact that
vineyards usually serve as
natural firebreaks.
an elephant; it’s just one
bite at a time,” he said.
The Rombauer winery,
which is noted for its world-
class chardonnay, had not
sustained any damage on
the property as of Sunday
at 5 p.m., said Carrie Reed,
winery spokeswoman.
Crews could be seen busi-
ly putting out nearby hot
spots.
Overall, 64 Napa Val-
ley wineries are located
within the evacuation or
evacuation warning areas,
according to Napa County
Office of Emergency Ser-
vices.
The fire comes at a time
when Napa County winer-
ies have begun to pick their
cabernet sauvignon, the
priciest grape in the United
States. Last year, the aver-
age value of the fruit was
about $8,000 per ton.
And if Glass fire flames
destroy any of these Wine
Country vineyards in Napa
it could cause outlandish
property losses. Consider
that planted vineyards in
Napa can sell for $350,000
to $1 million an acre, while
such acreage in Sonoma
County goes for $85,000 to
$300,000, Atlas Vineyard
A tanker drops above Davis Winery on Silverado Trail during the Glass fire on Sunday near
St. Helena. The fire comes at a critical time in the wine industry’s fall harvest.
Management in Napa told
Worth magazine in a Sep-
tember 2019 article.
On Sunday night as the
winds intensified, the big
concern among Napa vint-
ners is how much damage
will be done to grapevines
and how smoke taint will
affect the crop, especially
since some vineyards al-
ready suffered grape dam-
age from the Hennessey
fire in August. Early in the
day, at least one vineyard
along the Silverado Trail
had shriveled fruit hang-
ing from the vine.
The trail was eerily quiet
outside of fire emergency
vehicles and private fire
crews. The private crews
have become more ubiqui-
tous in the area in recent
years. They’re hired by in-
surance companies to help
KENT PORTER / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
protect multimillion-dollar
estates from burning.
In nearby St. Helena,
there appeared to be few
tourists. Market restau-
rant on Main Street had a
“fair amount” of cancella-
tions for brunch, but so far
none for dinner, general
manager Michael Martin
said.
“We’re just going to roll
through and see what hap-
pens,” Martin said. “It’s
like what we have done
throughout this whole
thing.”
The one place where
there was a significant
crowd was along Highway
29, where residents parked
their cars along the side
of the main Napa County
thoroughfare Sunday af-
ternoon to capture photos
and videos of the Glass
fire. Many stopped in front
of the iconic Napa Valley
sign welcoming guests “to
this world famous wine
growing region.”
Jim Morris, vice presi-
dent of estate management
at Charles Krug Winery in
St. Helena, noted the irony
of people posing in front of
the sign since tourism has
suffered greatly this year
as a result of the corona-
virus pandemic and wild-
fires.
“Nothing says Wine
Country vacation like a
photo in a conflagration,”
Morris wrote in an Insta-
gram post.
You can reach Staff Writer
Bill Swindell at 707-521-
5223 or bill.swindell@
pressdemocrat.com. On
Twitter @BillSwindell.

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