Katherine Cole

Is the real question whether wine regions could shield the rest of us from wildfires?'

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Sitting by the hearth with a glass of wine, I’m thinking about fire. Flames may warm my toes now, but they can be devastating in dry months. As wildfires have battered the wine industry in recent years, followup reports have largely focused on the damage. But perhaps we've missed the larger point. What if the real question isn’t how fires threaten wine, but whether wine regions could shield the rest of us from wildfires?

Consider Napa’s recent transformation from victim to warrior. After the devastating fires of 2017 and 2020, Napa Firewise CEO Joseph Nordlinger and his team identified two barriers to resilience that plague fire-prone regions: fragmented efforts and simple complacency.

In response, the team built a shared-services hub for Napa County, coordinating equipment, planning and funding ‘so we don’t have 23 Fire Safe Councils competing with one another for grant funds’, explains Nordlinger.