BOULDER CREEK -- The fight to save the small towns of the San Lorenzo Valley from unrelenting fire turned in favor of firefighters Sunday, if only briefly, as crews beat the blaze back to the wooded ridges above. But the battle, in the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, was far from over.
On Sunday afternoon, new fingers of the 74,000-acre CZU Lightning Complex were crawling toward the main strips of Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond, carrying flames into rural neighborhoods, sending columns of thick smoke high out of redwood forests and throwing fire ever closer to historic downtowns.
While this rugged valley of about 20,000 people, just outside of Santa Cruz, has seen wildfires before, nothing quite like this has hit the area.
“We’re worried that the heat and fire front could burn into town,” said Sam Robustelli, a director and former chief at the Boulder Creek Volunteer Fire Department, as he looked out from his fire station at smoke-covered hillsides. “As you can see, the forest comes right down here.”
The CZU Lightning Complex, which started Aug. 16, has already claimed 131 homes in northern Santa Cruz and southern San Mateo counties. It’s also burned such landmarks as Big Basin State Park, the 125-year-old one-room Alba Schoolhouse in Ben Lomond and the scenic Swanton Pacific Railroad in Davenport.
On Sunday, the Boulder Creek Fire Department, alongside other local agencies and the state’s Cal Fire, was sending strike teams to put out new ignitions created by wind-whipped embers. But like many parts of California reeling from last week’s spree of lightning fires, this valley along the twisting San Lorenzo River hasn’t had enough firefighters to keep up.
The CZU Lightning Complex fires continue to threaten homes in Boulder Creek, Ben Lomond. But this house is fine thanks to an engine crew from Felton #CaliforniaWildFire pic.twitter.com/AWzneSONsZ
— Kurtis Alexander (@kurtisalexander) August 23, 2020
“We’d like to have some air support up there so that spot fire doesn’t become a larger fire,” said Robustelli, pointing to a pillar of smoke on the ridge high above the natural food grocery Wild Roots. “But we haven’t got it.”
The overpowering inferno was especially bad news for Stan Hooper, 58, who learned over the weekend that his home of 21 years, just west of the downtown, was no more.
“You think of the destruction in New Orleans during the hurricanes and you say this couldn’t be happening in America,” Hooper said. “Now it’s happening in the Bay Area.”
The recently retired maintenance supervisor is temporarily staying with friends in San Jose, while he figures out his next move.
Hallie Greene, 37, who heads Boulder Creek’s recreation district, is not only trying to figure out where she and her two daughters might land after losing their home but what the future might hold for her now partially-destroyed community.
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“My whole life is Boulder Creek,” she said. “We all know each other, so we’re all going through this together. But it will be interesting to see how we make out.”
Like many of the homes in the valley, Greene’s house dated to the 1890s, when logging families settled the region and seized on the bounty of redwoods for lumber to help build out California. While Greene knew living in the forest came with risks, she never expected a blaze of this magnitude.
“After the fire in Paradise, everyone was saying, yeah, it could happen here, but I didn’t think it would burn such a large expanse,” she said. “I’m just feeling glad that we’re safe.”
Many in the San Lorenzo Valley, where livelihoods run the gamut from teachers and small business owners to pot growers and Silicon Valley commuters — all united by an appreciation of mountain life — were trying to remain optimistic. Messages between residents were racing across social media, celebrating such victories as the survival of a wild albino peacock named Albert and the fact that the beloved Brookdale Lodge still stood.
There was also community support. A Boulder Creek resident named Bryan Snarr fouled up his Subaru Outback when he evacuated with his six goats, two dogs and family of four, and he started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to clean up the stench. As of Sunday night, he had raised $525. He announced that he was actually donating the money to those who had lost their homes.
While a huge evacuation effort is credited with successfully getting people out of town, not everyone left.
Tyrone Clark, 55, took note of the dearth of firefighters and took it upon himself to help protect his community. Wearing a kilt and T-shirt along with his mane of bushy brown hair, the longtime Boulder Creek resident was driving around in his pickup with a pump and water drum to douse flames.
“I’m staying here to fight until the end,” he said, before climbing to the roof of the gas station to take inventory of the fire.
As of Sunday afternoon, the CZU Lightning complex was just 8% contained, according to Cal Fire.
The low number was worrying many of the evacuees, like Ben Lomond resident Thomas Dunham, 40, who said his house was probably safe but might not be if the blaze crossed Highway 9 and ran east, where firefighters did not want to see it go.
He was particularly concerned for low-income residents, many of whom staked out a piece of mountain property long before the tech boom brought money to the hills and drove up real estate prices.
“There are a lot of people with vacation homes up there,” Dunham said from an organic farm near Santa Cruz where he and his family were temporarily staying. “But a lot of people are just blue-collar workers wondering if they’ll have a home to come back to.”
Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
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In Santa Cruz Mountains, the fight is on to save small towns as CZU Complex fire roars on - San Francisco Chronicle
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