While the Rocky Fire continues to rage just north of Napa – take a gander at the Los Angeles Times’ excellent coverage for updates – let’s take a look back at one of the worst fires in Napa County history, the Atlas Peak fire of 1981.
Later that afternoon, arson investigators located a pair of “timed” incendiary devices near the Trail. According to Captain Darrell Bressler in an article in the New York Times, “The devices were matchbooks in which slow-burning cigarettes had been stuffed, lighted and apparently tossed from a passing car at spots where two of the four fires that eventually merged into one had started.” No one was ever arrested for setting the blaze. Then Napa County Fire Chief Buron Carniglia said in a 2006 Napa Register retrospective article that “We knew who the dirtbags were but we never had enough evidence to make an arrest. No one would talk.”[3]
Police officer and Soda Canyon resident Joe Ramos said “I saw the whole damn hill explode. It just literally blew up…All of a sudden it got very yellow outside, there was all kinds of smoke…The wind started sucking back into the fire. The fire was blowing down the far hill toward the house, but the wind was going back into the fire…When the first fire trucks got here, there was nothing they could do. They were telling people to get out, they were just evacuating.” The Ramoses were lucky – their home and livestock survived the inferno, but many of his neighbors lost everything.[5]
[1] “Firefighters Stem Napa Valley Blaze,” New York Times, June 25, 1981, http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/25/us/firefighters-stem-napa-valley-blaze.html
[2] “A Napa Firestorm,” Napa Register, Special Edition, June 29, 1981.
[3] Marsha Dorgan and David Ryan, “Fire on the Mountain,” Napa Register, June 22, 2006, http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/fire-on-the-mountain/article_91228a84-916f-5cf9-9172-4ba3954dc0ed.html.
[4] “A Napa Firestorm,” June 29, 1981.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.