The Inferno Rages

The recent record-breaking wildfire crisis in Northern California is hitting the cannabis industry harder than nearly any other local industry due to the lack of insurance, banking access and cannabis product that won’t pass inspection due to smoke contamination. Innumerable residents in the Santa Rosa, Sonoma and Napa areas had no choice but to take whatever they could grab and run as the fires quickly spread.

While the devastation in Northern California’s famed wine vineyards is receiving thorough mainstream media coverage, it quickly became obvious that the cannabis industry was left largely unnoticed by the media in comparison.

“The fires have devastated many cannabis businesses. Unlike wineries and other agricultural businesses, cannabis does not qualify for crop insurance. We know of at least 30 growers who lost their entire farms, with some also losing homes and cash savings that were kept onsite because of banking restrictions on the cannabis industry.”

There is little certainty about exactly how the swath of wildfires was ignited, but some evidence suggests that the fires in Sonoma County may have been caused by windblown power lines on the night of October 8. According to police, Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, 29, was arrested in Sonoma County on October 15 on suspicion of felony arson. However, Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano denied any correlation between Gonzalez and these fires. “There’s no indication [Gonzalez is] related to these fires at all,” Sheriff Giordano said at a press conference. “I want to kill that speculation right now, so we don’t have things running too far out of control.” Further, there has been a surge of conspiracy theories including one in particular—blaming Mexican cartels of attempting to destroy the California’s first recreational harvest through pyromania.

At this stage in the crisis, companies are attempting to grasp the level of losses sustained due to the fires. “CannaCraft is still assessing losses to cultivation sites throughout Sonoma County, but the damage has been substantial with several structures lost and upwards $700,000 in lost product,” Kial Long, vice president of marketing for CannaCraft told CULTURE. “Approximately 20 percent of CannaCraft’s 150 employees were evacuated and several lost their homes. CannaCraft’s headquarters remain intact and operational at this time with a portion of that office space being used as the American Red Cross Regional Logistical Headquarters.”

Wildfire insurance is virtually inaccessible to cannabis companies, and the unwillingness of cooperation from banks further complicates the matter. “Unlike wineries and other agricultural businesses, cannabis does not qualify for crop insurance,” Long added. “We know of at least 30 growers who lost their entire farms, with some also losing homes and cash savings that were kept onsite because of banking restrictions on the cannabis industry.” There isn’t much that cannabis companies can do to recover in the wake of disasters like this without insurance.

According to Long, CannaCraft has access to a 40,000 square-foot manufacturing facility and a 12-acre industrial space. “We thought to ourselves, ‘We have a lot of space, equipment and vehicles—what can we do to help with all these resources?’ We were taking in a lot of our employees that were evacuating. They were sleeping in our workspace. So we reached out to the American Red Cross to get cots for employees who were evacuated.” Eventually CannaCraft was contacted by the project point person for the Sonoma County/Napa County area with the American Red Cross. The American Red Cross asked CannaCraft if it had any office space to serve as its headquarters for the regional logistical operation headquarters. “He came over and said that the space was perfect, and asked, ‘Can we please move our volunteers in here?’” Long added. The company compassionately complied.

Although CannaCraft’s manufacturing site was not impacted, its nearly half a dozen cultivation sites throughout Northern California were directly impacted by the fires. That didn’t stop the company from assisting others.

Additionally CannaCraft is helping out in more ways than just assisting the American Red Cross. “We are setting up an emergency temporary housing site,” Long added. “We’ve outfitted one of our lots that can hold up to 40 RVs, and we’ve brought in portable showers and restroom trailers.” CannaCraft is taking donations in the form of RVs so people can donate either permanently or temporarily. The company is also fundraising to buy more RVs.

Fewer farms were hit harder than SPARC’s farms, especially its farm in Glen Ellen. “The level of devastation is—significant,” Co-founder of SPARC, Erich Pearson, told CULTURE in reference to the Glen Ellen farm. “We lost everything that we harvested to date, and what’s left is, you know, [hopefully salvageable] and left for concentrates.” Pearson told us that he would describe the damage as “near-total.” The California Growers Association, Pearson added, has a fund set up to help those who have been affected by the fires.

Unfortunately, the fire crisis is nowhere near over. Some of the businesspeople we spoke to were in the middle of attempting to save their farms. “I’m looking at a fire as we speak,” Peter Pietrangeli, founder of Acme Elixirs told CULTURE via a telephone call.

According to Pietrangeli, Harborside offered emergency assistance in one of his farms in Southern Marin County. “They issued a red fire flag warning, and we got that farm out before it got contaminated by any of the smoke or the fires,” Pietrangeli said. “When we got up, it was raining ash. So, they helped us save that crop.” Both Acme Elixirs and Harborside plan on putting the crop to a noble cause. “From that specific crop, we’re going to be donating the proceeds to fire relief,” explained Pietrangeli. “We haven’t had a chance to decide how much it is going to be, because we went from one situation to the the next over the last 12 hours from when we got one farm fully moved from Marin over to Salinas when Harborside saved our crop, to having to evacuate nine or 10 trimmers and my father-in-law from my farm in Santa Cruz that is now the one that we are more worried about.”

Opportunistic thieves, unbelievably, are looting the half-burnt crops from the farms in the area. The likelihood of losing product to thieves is amplified during times of crisis.

Some farmers considered themselves lucky because the fire passed by their crop—but then when they go to harvest it and cut it down, it had an “unforgiving mesquite barbeque smell” to it. With so much new emphasis on testing cannabis, they don’t know exactly how many harmful carcinogens are getting into the cannabis.

There are a lot of uncertainties building up because of this crisis, but one thing is certain—it will take months, if not years, for many of these farmers to fully recover.