At the time, Napa County Fire Chief Geoff Belyea remembers he believed there would never be another fire season like 2008.
But he thought the same after the Valley Fire in 2015, and again amid the Atlas and Tubbs fires in 2017. Asked if he now believed Napa County would see increasingly severe fire seasons going forward, Belyea paused.
âI donât know if you can say that we have seen the worst, but I donât know if you can say the worst is yet to come,â he said.
Itâs hard to speak in certain terms about what future fire seasons might bring for Napa County and the North Bay. What is for certain, experts say, is that warmer and drier conditions across California are giving way to wildfires more frequent, chaotic and destructive than ever before.