Some evacuation orders lifted
Crews in ‘mop-up’ stage as Santa Cruz Mountains blaze now 71% contained
Fire officials began to lift evacuation orders, allowing displaced residents to trickle home, as firefighters on Sunday tightened their grip on a blaze that tore through the Santa Cruz Mountains over the past week.
Cal Fire canceled the evacuation Sunday for Summit Road from Loma Prieta Road to Highway 152 in Santa Clara County. Residents were allowed back starting at noon. On Saturday, officials also allowed residents to return to their homes on Croy Road.
Firefighters have made considerable progress in getting the fire knocked down, said Bryan Martin, a fire apparatus engineer with Cal Fire. Crews were in the “final mop-up” stages Sunday afternoon, he said, and were looking for hot spots and setting up sandbags to help control erosion in areas of the forest that had been damaged by the fire.
“There’s very little fire activity, if any, other than some of the unburned fuels way inside,”
Martin said.
On Sunday, Summit Road was dotted with dozens of handmade signs thanking firefighters for their service, some decorated with hearts, smiley faces and little flames. The signs seemed to appear every few feet along Summit, a narrow, winding road that offers sweeping views of the mountains and forest below.
While homes in the area seemed untouched by the fire, huge swaths of blackened mountainside and scorched trees were visible below. Firefighters and PG&E crews were still at work Sunday, trying to get life back to normal for the residents who call the mountains home.
Several locals on Sunday said they hadn’t left under the evacuation order. But Garrick Silver, who is visiting from Virginia and was staying at a friend’s home on Summit Road, packed up last week, afraid the flames would reach the road and leave him stranded on top of the mountain.
On Sunday afternoon, he was standing on an overlook near his friend’s house, surveying the scorched earth below and recalling the blaze he’d seen burning from that spot earlier in the week.
“It looked like another planet, actually,” said Silver, 40. “There were hot coals all up the mountain.”
The ravenous Loma blaze has been burning for nearly a week as firefighters combated record-high temperatures, thick vegetation and steep terrain in their attempts to stop its destructive spread. As of Sunday evening, 4,474 acres had burned and the fire was 71 percent contained. The fire has destroyed 12 residences and 16 outbuildings, according to Cal Fire, and continues to threaten 81 structures.
A drop in temperature and rise in humidity toward the end of the week helped shift conditions in firefighters’ favor, Martin said. And area fire departments were able to amass a huge number of personnel to battle the blaze. There were still 1,308 firefighters assigned to the fire Sunday afternoon, working 24-hour shifts.
“No. 1 is getting all the resources here and throwing a lot of stuff at it, whether it be aircraft or bulldozers,” Martin said. “We got a lot of people here in a short amount of time.”
Mandatory evacuation orders remained in place for the Loma Prieta ridgeline area, including the tributary roads along Summit Road east of Soquel San Jose Road to the Ormsby fire station. The order covers Loma Chiquita Road, Casa Loma Road and Loma Prieta Way.
Several roads remained closed. Loma Prieta Road at Loma Prieta Way was shut down, as was Casa Loma Road west of McKean Road.