California is in a terrible crisis right now as wildfires are consuming large areas of the state, and as CBS Local KPIX reports, one of these areas includes Napa.
Wildfires raged out of control across the Bay Area forcing evacuations in Alameda, Santa Clara, Contra Costa, Santa Cruz, Marin, Napa and Sonoma Counties.
The fires in Napa County exploded in size Tuesday, growing from an estimated 12,000 acres Tuesday morning to more than 30,000 acres later that night. It prompted evacuations in many neighborhoods near Lake Berryessa.
Tuesday night near Highway 128 and Berryessa Knoxville Road, small fires were still burning on the hills. It was a remnant of an intense flare up of one branch of the fire late Tuesday afternoon.
The roar of the fires echoed through canyons as fast-moving flames consumed homes in the Spanish Flat neighborhood on the southwest side of Lake Berryessa.
Nearby on Highway 128, the fire torched the trees and consumed the dry grasses near the Somerston Winery between Lake Hennessey and Lake Berryessa.
“It just keeps coming. Every few years, another fire,” says Nylind Stanley. He lives in Capell Canyon and says he was ordered to evacuate, but refused. He says this time, he doesn’t trust the firefighters to save his house.
“They’re stretched so thin now, there’s very few fire trucks up here and planes,” says Stanley.
His neighbor, Mike Nicholini, came over with water tenders and laid out hoses around the house.
“We’re pretty set up and ready, ready to take care of whatever comes down the road,” says Nicholini.
CalFire admits their resources are spread thin. There are dozens of fires burning all across Northern California. The hard part is, all of them started at once during recent lightning storms.
The continued heatwave isn’t making things any easier for firefighters.
“These conditions aren’t conducive to control of the fire. With as many fires as are going on, the resources are limited to some extent so that does make it a little more difficult to control,” says Capt. Robert Foxworthy with CalFire. (source)
Napa and the Napa Valley region is home to many of America’s vineyards. While there are vineyards in every state, the Napa Valley region is the most famous and arguably the largest supplier of grapes on the marketplace. Since most wineries do not grow their own grapes, they purchase from places such as Napa growers and will use those grapes to make their wine.
This is a big problem for wine lovers, because the destruction of the grape crops by fire, while it will recover in time, will cause a shortage of grapes on the marketplace, and thus it means that grape prices and any products produced from grapes- most notably wine -will have to show an increase.
The price changes won’t affect foreign wines, so they will remain what they are, but American wines? One may want to buy a few extra bottles now.
In addition, there is a possibility of higher vegetable prices, due to damage caused to farms. However, this is likely to be smaller in light of the fires are in particular regions and not most of the state.
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