Vineyards may have kept wine country fire from getting worse
LOS ANGELES - Christian Palmaz used hoes, shovels and rakes to keep flames from his family's 19th-century vineyard estate home on the flanks of Mount St. George in eastern Napa County.
But he didn't have to worry about his vines. They're green, very much alive, and a stark contrast to more than 500 acres of oak, manzanita and grassland charred by the Atlas fire as it tore across Palmaz's property.
As the Napa and Sonoma valleys struggle through days of a raging firestorm that has already claimed at least 28 lives, many vineyards in the nearly 100,000-acre burn areas appear to be emerging largely unscathed.
The vineyards stand in
