Winds reignite hidden embers, memories
Some Boulder Creek, Watsonville residents forced to evacuate
Fierce winds Tuesday kicked up fires near longdormant hot spots of the CZU Lightning Complex wildfires in the South Bay, launching evacuations among weary residents still reeling from the infernos that burned last year.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, fire crews evacuated at least 20 families from their homes west of Highway 9 near Boulder Creek. To the south, around 100 families were evacuated from their homes north of Watsonville near Aptos.
The CZU Lightning Complex series of wildfires began in August, heavily damaging Big Basin State Park and nearly 1,000 homes and taking months to bring under control.
“It’s hard to believe after all this time,” said Cecile Juliette, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s
Santa Cruz Unit. “When the wind came along and got behind the smoldering spots it just kicked up the fire.”
Juliette said that embers can still smolder undetected underground, and continue to burn slowly even after rain or snow storms.
“Once it’s underground, it acts like an oven,” Juliette said. “It can snow and you can have fire underground.”
Craig B. Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San José State University, said that while it is not unheard of that embers could continue to smolder for months underground, the key factors were Tuesday’s winds and the sparse rainfall in California this winter.
“It’s surprising these ignitions are picking up, but this stuff does happen,” Clements said. “It’s just because
we haven’t had enough rain.”
Gusts of wind peaked at 97 mph in high North Bay elevations, and in the 70s and 80s in the East and South bays, according to meteorologist Gerry Diaz of the National Weather Service.
The winds also knocked out power to about 55,000 PG&E customers in the Bay Area, a number that was close to 40,000 around 1 p.m. The utility had also enacted a public safety power shutdown that affected about 5,000 customers in the central and southern part of the state, but had no planned shutdowns in the Bay Area.
In Southern California, the region’s notorious Santa Ana winds were ramping up, with gusts of at least 86 mph measured. Southern California Edison shut off power to some 58,000 customers.
As the winds calm and the temperatures fall with them through the week, a system with rain may
make its way into the Bay Area with measurable precipitation arriving by Friday night. Snow could be mixed in with rain at the upper elevations, Diaz said.
The China Grade Fire burning about 4 miles northwest of Boulder Creek hadn’t sparked any evacuations. The blaze had burned 20 acres of timber and was 50% contained.
The Freedom Fire burning near Watsonville had burned 40 acres and was 20% contained. The Panther Ridge Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains had burned 15 acres and was 55% contained. The Fanning Fire burning in Ben Lomond was roughly the same size and also 30% contained.
Nearby, a pair of vegetation fires known as the Bonny Complex fires were under control after scorching 4 acres. The North Butano Fire had consumed 10 acres in the CZU Lightning Complex burn area and was 0% contained. Fire crews were having to slice through
debris in the road to try to access the fire.
Ramon Rodriguez, 73, lost his Boulder Creek house to fire last summer, and was dealing with the odyssey of small business administration loans, disaster aid and insurance when Tuesday’s winds kicked up.
“I thought, ‘Oh man, here we go again,’ ” Rodriguez said, recalling the bucolic scenery of the area, stirred by nature’s fury: a snowstorm shortly after he arrived, torrential rains in the 1980s, and the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.
“When I moved here in 1973 I said, ‘I want to die here,’ ” he added, “but not yet.”
Near Aptos, Kelly Klett was eyeing the hillsides around her home and horserescue facility, Castlewood Ranch, where small fires were creeping down from large swaths of smoking, charred brushland. She’d been awakened around 8 a.m. by a ranch hand pounding on her door and warning
her of the smoke.
She went outside, saw smoke along the ridge line above the ranch to the east and called authorities about the fire. Flames topped the ridge line, torched a cluster of redwoods and started down the hill, fueled by hotburning manzanita.
“It was coming at us so fast, and so close,” she said. Klett and her assistant had more than two dozen animals to evacuate.
By midafternoon, small fires continued to burn within 100 yards of her home, and she was standing by with a livestock trailer in case she had to evacuate the remaining animals, all of them rescues — including five alpacas, a donkey, a mule, two goats and a pig.
Mario Ibarra, co-owner of the Casa Nostra restaurant in nearby Ben Lomond, said he and his family were awakened at 3 a.m. by winds howling through the redwoods that surround their home and the crackle of falling branches.
“It was a nightmare,” Ibarra said Tuesday morning as he raked piles of fallen branches from his driveway.
“We were a little scared,” Ibarra said. “We were going to go out, but while you’re driving, something can happen, too.”
Ibarra said a tree branch fell on the outdoor eating area of his restaurant, but he couldn’t get through to inspect it because trees had fallen across Highway 9 into power lines and crews were trying to clear the hazard.
News of new fires in the area, Ibarra said, was even more upsetting. Last summer he and his family had to evacuate for two weeks. He recalled spending sleepless nights watching the security camera video outside his restaurant hoping it would survive.
“I couldn’t sleep for two days — and now this,” Ibarra said. “It’s crazy.”