Many San Mateo County evacuees return home

That leaves areas collectively home to about 2,600 people still under evacuation orders, including Loma Mar, Dearborn Park and Butano Canyon, among other areas.

Those evacuated from communities to the north and west of the fires, including most of Pescadero, La Honda and San Gregorio, were allowed to return home late last week.

At last count, 329 evacuees are staying in hotels and a total of 11 homes have been destroyed in San Mateo County, Durand said. It is not yet known how many homes may be substantially damaged.

The fires, which have largely affected Santa Cruz County, have torched a total of 85,218 acres and as of Monday are 43% contained. A total of 78,000 people across both counties had been evacuated and more than half of them have since been allowed to return home.  

Elsa Wyant, a 57-year resident of Loma Mar, said it felt like Christmas morning when she returned home 10 days after the mandatory evacuation order was issued.

“Driving home, the closer I got I found myself smiling and just joyful and very thankful. It was like Christmas morning when you’re a kid,” Wyant said. “It’s a miracle my home is still standing because the fire got so close.”

While Loma Mar is still under evacuation orders, Wyant said she was given the green light to return last Thursday and was the first in her neighborhood to do so.

“It was eerie at first because no one else was there but me,” she said. Her neighbors began trickling in later that night and in the days since. “As soon as my neighbors came back I thought ‘I’m really home now.’”

A La Honda resident who wanted to remain anonymous returned home the day the evacuation order was lifted after spending eight days in a hotel. Her home as well as the entire town was spared by the fires.

“I have survivor’s guilt for having everything be safe and sound here,” she said.

Fighting flames

Steve Blank, owner of K&S Ranch off Highway 1 in Pescadero, never really evacuated. As the flames approached roughly two weeks ago, he and his ranch crew, who also live on the property, hosed down the premises, created fire breaks and otherwise worked to save their homes.

They worked until 40-foot flames, coming from both sides of the property at once, were a stone’s throw from their homes that were also completely engulfed in smoke, forcing them to retreat.

“We were abandoning ship thinking the house went up in flames. Just as we were leaving Cal Fire came up,” Blank said. “They saved the ranch.”

Blank stayed elsewhere that night, but his ranch crew snuck back onto the property an hour after the biggest flames ripped through it to continue the fight.

“If the big house wasn’t savable they have a farm house and wanted to see if they could save that,” Blank said. “While Cal Fire fought the fire at the big house they were down here fighting the fire at the farm house.”

Both homes were ultimately saved — the flames came up to the main house’s lawn — but plenty of farming infrastructure was destroyed.

Blank and his ranch crew have been living on the property since the fire hit, but with generators as the power remains out.

According to Pacific Gas and Electric, about 150 San Mateo County customers are without power as of Monday due to the fires while 5,000 Santa Cruz County residents are still without power.

Blank said communities just minutes away on Whitehouse Canyon Road suffered extensive damage. He estimates roughly 20 to 40 homes were lost there and just four of them were saved.

A woman who did not provide her name said a friend’s home near Gazos Creek burned to the ground and only the chicken coop survived. She said another home nearby was saved because it was equipped with a system that automatically sprayed fire-suppressing foam all over the structure when the flames arrived.

Residents of communities such as Butano Canyon were evacuated two weeks ago and may not be able to return for up to two months, some were told.

Dangers of burned-out trees

While the fire is under control in the area, burned-out trees have and will continue to topple over, creating numerous safety hazards. A PG&E spokesman said crews have so far removed 455 hazard trees in fire zones, and Cal Fire crews are also doing that work.

Butano Canyon resident Tom Dodd said each of the roughly 90 homes in the area survived the fires, but not their aftermath. After the worst of the blazes came through, a burned-out tree fell on his neighbor’s house and crushed it.

Dodd credited his neighbors, about 35 of whom stayed to fight the fires in an organized fashion, for saving his neighborhood. He said they saved his own home on three separate occasions.

“My neighbors were heroic,” he said.

Crews worked in shifts to attack the fires in teams, patrol the area at night and also host nightly Zoom meetings to update those who had evacuated.

During those meetings, he said neighbors who fought that particular fire compared it to lava.

 “It was an amazingly slow-burning fire that crawled down the slope,” he said. “It wasn’t like a canopy fire, there weren’t giant flames up in the air most of the time. It was just blowing embers moving down the hill slowly like lava, they said. Many described it as a cigarette burning.”

Evacuations

Dodd has been staying with his daughter since he evacuated, but said may have to find a new place soon as her house is getting crowded. Soon relatives fleeing separate fires will be coming to stay with them.

“We know a lot of people who’re displaced by fires right now,” he said.

Pam Mayers, also a Butano Canyon resident, went to stay with her mother-in-law in San Gregorio when the evacuation order was announced. Not long after arriving there, San Gregorio also had to evacuate. That was her second evacuation in days.  

Asked if the fires have made her reconsider where she lives, she dismissed the question without hesitation.

“I live in a proverbial log cabin in the redwoods. Sometimes that’s the price you pay for paradise,” she said.

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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