A raging and unpredictable wildfire complex forced authorities Thursday to order the evacuation of UC Santa Cruz, one of the few times that students and faculty at a top institute in California were forced to flee flames.
State and local authorities ordered the campus to evacuate late in the day after earlier warning that evacuations may be necessary.
Scotts Valley, a hub of the Santa Cruz County tech industry, was also ordered to evacuate, with some residents en route to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, a shelter for the firefighters.
“All residents on campus must now be evacuated and ready to not return for at least two weeks,” UC Santa Cruz said in a tweet. “The UCSC evacuation center is in Coconut Grove near the Boardwalk.”
The mascot of UC Santa Cruz is the Banana Slug, a creature that thrives in cool, wet forests. Santa Cruz has been a bit different lately, and the flames from the CZU August Lightning Complex fire threaten to overwhelm a UC campus and possibly drive it to Santa Cruz, a city of 64,000.
More than 18,000 students are enrolled at UC Santa Cruz, though it is not clear how many were physically on campus as in Santa Cruz for the evacuation board. The university is working with local hotels to find rooms for students who have been forced to flee.
The CZU August Lightning Complex fire has spread to 48,000 acres, destroyed dozens of structures and forced the evacuations of tens of thousands. It has destroyed historic structures in Big Basin Redwoods State Park and is jumping over rough terrain amid a pandemic and multiple fires in Northern California that have challenged firefighters in the region.
As of late Thursday, more than 492,000 acres in Northern and Central California have burned – the equivalent of about 760 square miles, more than the land area of the city of Los Angeles. At least 134 structures have been destroyed.
Firefighters named the fires that hit San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties the largest in recent memory.
‘It’s a historic event. This fire is historic for an area like San Mateo-Santa Cruz. We have not seen seven fires burn like this in this unit, in one of these counties, for many, many years. And those fires were much smaller than what we have in front of us today, ‘said Ian Larkin, unit manager for Cal Fire’s San Mateo Santa Cruz Unit.
Billy See, a commander of Cal Fire raids for the CZU August fire in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, said the fire grew rapidly on Thursday – 700 to 1,000 acres an hour in heavy wood.
“That’s a dangerous rate of spread,” See said.
“We need to be aware that we are in historic times in this fire that we are dealing with here along the coastline.” “It’s a dangerous situation for everyone involved,” See said. As more resources and more labor arrive,
“It is still not enough. We are still drastically short of a fire of this magnitude. ”
See said the return of the cool marine layer and humidities will help, but there is still some concern about the wind, which was expected to be similar to the situation Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with wind forecasts of 10 mph to 20 mph at the ridge peaks. There will still be low humidity at night, he said.
“This country wants to burn at night, more than during the day. And that’s because of the wind patterns. The wind will blow downwards and wipe out the smoke, which will increase the rate of fire spread through the vegetation there, ”said See.
“It’s all based on terrain, weather conditions and fuel conditions. And the conditions for fuels at the moment are very bad, just because of the drought conditions … on this coastline. “Officials said Thursday night that the fire broke out in the San Mateo County communities of Pescadero and Loma Mar.”
Davenport’s Santa Cruz community was still threatened, though fire broke out on the shoreline. The fire has moved its way down to Highway 9 near Ben Lomond’s mountainous Santa Cruz County community, which is also close to the Boulder Creek and Felton communities.
Firefighters were in that area and protecting structures. San Mateo County has issued evacuation orders from the cities of Pescadero, San Gregorio and La Honda.
The National Water Service Thursday night said low pressure in this area was declining, bringing cooler temperatures and higher humidity.
The plume of smoke associated with the fire in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties smoked most of the Central Coast, “with the plume stretching nearly 600 miles offshore,” the weather service said.
“Smoke is trapped by the region due to a strong decoupling of the lower and free atmosphere, resulting in poor air quality conditions,” the weather service said.
