OFFICIALS ASK PUBLIC TO STAY OUT OF TORO PARK
After fire 'let nature take its course'
SALINAS >> After more than half of Toro County Park burned in the River Fire, officials are asking the public to stay out and let nature take its course before rebuilding begins after the rainy season.
Bryan Flores, an operations manager for the Monterey County Parks Department, led the media on a tour of the fire damage at the park located along the Monterey-Salinas Highway.
“The county’s message right now for Toro Park is please adhere to the park closure,” Flores said. “It is a dangerous environment right now, it is a fragile ecosystem, we have Cal Fire crews still doing suppression repair work, dozers and hand crews. To have hikers and bikers and horses coming in at this time, they could get into some trouble.”
Besides putting themselves in physical danger due to unstable soil and hazardous trees, Flores said trespassers risk getting cited by rangers patrolling the park. He said people have been sneaking into the park every day, whether its those who live nearby hopping the fence for a hike to look at the damage or motorcyclists riding through on dirt bikes at night.
“We want the park to be open as soon as we can as well, to allow people to come in and enjoy Toro Park for what it’s meant to be used for, but currently we’re still doing our damage assessments,” Flores said. “There are still hazards: trees that are burned that could fall at any moment, smoldering stump pits, what are called killer trees that have been compromised so much that they could fall. And it’s a real fragile ecosystem right now.”
The park remains closed with no timeline for reopening. Flores said 8090% of the park’s trail network burned. Rehabilitation work will not begin on the trails until the early spring at the soonest.
“We need to let nature do what it’s going to do,” Flores said. “We’re not going to get into trail rebuilding at this moment because why rebuild something that could potentially be destroyed by winter rains, debris slides, things like that. … Heavy, torrential downpours would be detrimental to the landscape here.”
Cal Fire’s Watershed Emergency Response Team will put together a report that will help guide rehabilitation and repair plans. The report will tell officials where the ground burned so hot the soil was damaged and mudslides or debris slides will be possible this winter.
“Luckily for Toro Park, much of the area that burned, burned quickly and didn’t into the trees, it didn’t burn down into the soil itself,” Flores said. “So hopefully we don’t see a whole lot of debris and mudslides, probably just some spot areas near the improved areas of the park. But it is the backcountry where it is moonscaped, one would expect that there would be some heavy debris coming down.”
While damage assessments are being conducted, officials believe roughly 3,500- 4,000 acres burned. Including the neighboring Marks Ranch property, Toro
Park is 5,595 acres. Flores said he’s unsure how much repairs will cost but they could be hundreds of thousands of dollars or over $1 million.
The burn scar, including controlled backburns lit by firefighters, runs right down to the main park road in the front of the park and to the back property line.
“So Ollason Trail, which kind of goes east to west to Harper Canyon, everything from where that goes up to 1800 into Simas Peak, everything south and east of that burned,” Flores said. “So basically about threequarters of the park is in the black.”
Lightning sparked the River Fire on Toro Park property near Pine Canyon in the early morning hours of Aug. 16 and it burned 48,088 acres before firefighters fully contained the blaze Sept. 4.
“Three o’clock in the afternoon (Aug. 16), it kind of blew up and started heading toward the communities that are along River Road there,” Flores said. “Toro Park is a massive park. It stretches all the way down River Road to Pine Canyon, all the way to San Benancio and into the back to upper San Benancio.”
The fire destroyed 30 structures and damaged 13 but the structures in Toro Park were saved. Once Flores got word homes were being evacuated in upper Pine Canyon, he jumped into action.
“I assumed that Cal Fire would be using Toro Park as incident command so we came and evacuated the park,” he said. “In about half an hour, we were able to get a couple of hundred people out of the park. And then I stood there at the gate and waited for Cal Fire to show up and about 9 o’clock that night they did. Within 24 hours, we were able to set up a small city (the incident command center).”
Flores said county officials knew the park would be impacted by the incident command center and heavy equipment rolling in.
“But then as the fire started approaching the park, it started getting more real I guess you could say,” he said. “And then the night that it did crest the ridge behind the Toro Park maintenance shop and started threatening the incident command post and they started doing firing operations from the park road, it got very real. I’m not going to lie, we sat back and a lot of us, including a lot of the Cal Fire guys, shed a tear a little bit for seeing how much of our park that we love was going up in
flames.”
Since the fire was contained and county officials have started assessing the damage, Flores said wildlife has been coming down from the backcountry to the front of the park.
“It’s like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” Flores joked.
Dozens of turkeys were roaming the lower parts of the park Thursday along with a few deer. Flores said he’s seen bobcats as well recently.
“The wildlife has been pushed out of the burn area down to the improved areas of the park and the area that borders Highway 68,” he said. “So they have been displaced. …We haven’t seen any bears or mountain lions yet but we know that they’re here and they’re probably roaming around looking for food as well.”
Toro Park remains closed indefinitely and Flores said he can’t say when it will reopen.
“Our struggle is how do we open one portion of the park and alleviate the concern that people will not just stay there but will go into the burn scar area,” he said. “That’s the challenge and with limited resources and staffing, it would be very difficult.”