Will and Julissa Marcencia were celebrating their 100th day of owning Napa Valley’s local radio station in October 2017 when the young couple’s car began to violently drift on their drive back to Napa after dinner in Sonoma.
Recent transplants from Los Angeles, they feared for a moment that Southern California’s notorious “devil winds” had trailed them north.
“I mean, I was losing control of the steering wheel at some points driving through Carneros,” Will, 38, recalled. “And I was like, oh, this is weird.”
In reality, the couple were heading into the teeth of deadly firestorms igniting across Napa and Sonoma counties, their paths of destruction fueled by hurricane-force gales.
In the ensuing days of evacuations and heroic firefighting efforts, the couple learned valuable lessons. One was how to operate the controls of the radio station they purchased from…
