Wednesday, 30 September 2020

Residents assess damage after Glass Fire rips through St. Helena

ST. HELENA, Calif. (KRON) - Evacuation orders for the Deer Park community near St. Helena remain in effect.

San Gabriel firefighters up from Los Angeles tear down damaged fence lines and begin clearing debris after the glass fire swept through the unincorporated Napa County community of Deer Park.

The area near St. Helena is still under evacuation orders but some neighbors briefly allowed into the fire zone to assess the damage.

"This was a private Christian elementary school," Craig Philpott said.

Hundreds of lives impacted at one intersection in town -- Sunnyside and Mund roads.

On one corner, Foothills Adventist Elementary School severely damaged.

At one least one building completely destroyed and downed powerlines block the roadway separating the school from homes burned to the ground.

“This is a community, and this is a mess,” Philpott said.

Craig Philpott lives in nearby Howell Mountain. His family is safe and his home survived but he says the same cannot be said for some of his neighbors.

He was born in Deer Park and is the Director of Admissions for Pacific Union College in the Town of Angwin.

“There's a lot of stressed families. There's a college involved with a lot of displaced students. We have international students that don't have a family to go to in California and so finding housing for them and then the stress their dealing with," Philpott said.

Overwhelming obstacles for a community still reeling from last month's LNU Lightning Complex fires that are still not fully contained.

“Whatever the word community means, I feel it more now after three days, four days then I did before this happened,” Philpott said.

A community managing through yet another disaster.

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