Nearly a year after the Glass Fire burned over 67,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,500 structures in Napa and Sonoma counties, fire officials still aren't sure how it started.
CAL FIRE published the results of "a very meticulous and thorough investigation" on Friday, which didn’t find enough evidence to definitively determine the fire’s cause.
"The cause of the Glass Fire is currently (undetermined) pending any additional information or evidence that could lead to the determination of the cause," the agency wrote in a release.
CAL FIRE Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit Captain Specialist Gary Uboldi drafted the report, which can be read in its entirety here. Uboldi's investigation indicated that the fire most likely started between a pair of properties on North Fork Crystal Springs Road in St. Helena early in the morning of Sept. 27, 2020.
Although PG&E equipment has been responsible for a number of fires in Northern California, Uboldi ruled out any of the utility's own electrical equipment as a source of ignition. Uboldi couldn’t rule out private electrical equipment as a possibility, however.
The same dry, windy and hot conditions that contributed to the fire's spread also made determining its cause difficult, according to the agency. Uboldi wrote that "corresponding spot fires" after the Glass Fire's ignition ensured he couldn’t locate fire spread indicators that would pinpoint the fire’s source.
"Once the fire (ignited), it spread to a local significant fuel source and produced a substantial number of embers," he wrote. "This rapid ignition of surrounding fuels by spot fires contributed to the rapid spread and extreme fire behavior which was compounded by (dry winds)."
Though no deaths or injuries were reported during the Glass Fire, it was the latest in a string of recent, big blazes to burn through Wine Country. The LNU Lightning Complex ignited a month before the Glass Fire, while the Kincade Fire burned nearly 78,000 acres in 2019.
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