Napa Knows Fire. Now It's Time to Prepare.
The Atlas Fire and Glass Fire proved that Napa's hillside neighborhoods and valley-edge communities are directly in the path of mountain-born wildfire. For homeowners across the city, fire-hardening is no longer theoretical — it's the lesson two devastating fire seasons delivered.
Napa is the largest city in Napa County, home to roughly 79,000 people in the heart of California's most famous wine region. The city occupies the floor and lower hillsides of the Napa Valley, flanked by the Vaca Mountains to the east and the Mayacamas Range to the west. While the valley floor's vineyards and urban core carry lower fire risk, the city's eastern and western edges push into steep, oak-and-chaparral-covered hillsides that have produced two of Northern California's most destructive wildfires in the past decade.
In October 2017, the Atlas Fire ignited on Atlas Peak east of Napa during a severe Diablo wind event and burned 51,624 acres, destroying 783 structures — many of them homes in the hillside neighborhoods above Silverado Country Club and along Atlas Peak Road. Three years later, the Glass Fire erupted in September 2020, burning 67,484 acres across Napa and Sonoma Counties and destroying over 1,500 structures. These fires were not distant mountain events — they burned into Napa's residential neighborhoods, forced citywide evacuations, and demonstrated that the wildland-urban interface extends much further into the community than most residents had assumed.