Jenga Barrels! How Clever Napans Untangle The Quake Jumble & Avoid More Disaster

Carefully.

A typical, 59-gallon wine barrel weighs about 120 pounds empty and 600 pounds full.

But after an earthquake, you need to think of barrels full of ultra-top-quality Napa Valley wine as as a mountain of $20,000 Jenga blocks — precariously jumbled and ready to avalanche at the wrong move or the next aftershock.

Climbing among or over the barrels can start them moving and can crush the unfortunate barrel climber. Even without bodily injury, pulling the pile apart can dislodge a bung and start spilling the expensive wine.

NAPA VALLEY INGENUITY

First, you need something that can pluck a single barrel out of the boulder field.

Two people who really know barrels are Phil Burton who owns Barrel Builders, and Mike Blom who owns Barrelcare. They came up with two different solutions that work.

 

 

Carefully… Carefully

I spent about half an hour at Barrel Care in Napa, watching a talented and cautious team tease apart the mountain of barrels. Because the pile was so high and unstable, it was too dangerous to have a person climbing over the pile. So Barrel Care used a crane with a personnel platform. That made it safe, but never easy.

It takes five to ten minutes to get a barrel out from start to finish. Occasionally a bung would pop out. Everyone scrambled and the worker in the basket managed a series of world-class olympic maneuvers to get a new bung hammered in.

NOTE: Click on an image to enlarge.,