Why are they left behind? – The Mercury News

VIDEO: Resident of Bonny Doon defeats evacuation files, defends at home CLICK HERE if you have trouble viewing media.

BONNY DOON – Every wildfire has its holdouts. The idiosyncrasies scattered here and there, who refuse to leave. The people who make their last stand to save their property.

But in Bonny Doon’s Santa Cruz Mountains community, just a few miles up a wooded winding Pacific road, the population is defended by the dozens of evacuation orders.

With hundreds of burn wounds in Northern California burning out of control this week and Cal Fire officials complaining about their limited resources, residents of Bonny Doon have formed small brigades, loose groups of neighbors and friends who have stayed up all night to save anything. they can.

There’s no real city here, just a church, a school on the corner of Pine Flat and Ice Cream Grade, and spectacular views. But this is home, a place that Bonny Doon’s Facebook page calls “a part of heaven.”

Mike Rockafellow spent much of Thursday checking out holdouts and sticks from fires and then attempted to return Friday with chainsaw fuel. He knew the risk he was taking. There just aren’t enough firefighters, he said. ‘They need all the help they can get. I tell her, ‘Thank you for everything you do,’ but this is one of those very rare situations where there’s so much fire in California. ‘

As of Friday afternoon, at least 100 homes and other structures had been destroyed in what is known as the CZU complex fire – many of them here in Bonny Doon – but many more could be gone, and hundreds of others are still in danger of growing with spot fires.

Rockafellow and his neighbors have seen what can happen in Paradise and Santa Rosa and Redding, as wind heats up and burns take over entire neighborhoods and cities. But with fire around them, they are still resisting the mandatory calls to evacuate.

It’s the last thing firefighters want. By Friday morning, they had rescued three people in the Santa Cruz mountains who refused to leave.

“While I understand their desire to protect their homes, they do not have the training, and we are concerned that they will place themselves in positions they are not trained for,” Cal OW spokesman Dan Olson said Friday. “They may recognize the danger they are in.”

When firefighters on Thursday evacuated the town of Scotts Valley, a densely populated town a few miles to the east, with apartment complexes and strip centers and traffic lights, 95 percent of the 15,000 residents sustained and left, said Mayor Randy Johnson.

In Bonny Doon, most of the 2,600 residents also disperse deep into the airport.

Not Kalden Kho, 39, a Tibetan Buddhist who stayed behind and believes he has a higher calling, not only to save his neighbors’ houses, but perhaps to save a life.

“I do not want to leave until everyone leaves,” said Kho, who took a 48-hour break from fighting fires to connect to mobile service on the edge of Highway 1 on Friday and let his family know he’s OK. . He had worked with a team of 10 locals. “I’m exhausted. I’m so hungry and thirsty and I can not move.”

Wednesday and Thursday nights were especially scary, he said. At one point he recognized him thinking, ‘There was no wind, but there were no arsonists either. It’s scary, to be honest. ”

Of the locals who fled, a number of spray-painted messages left for firefighters and holdouts on trees and gates: “House Down below” and “Pool, 500 feet!”

Many of those left behind said they had tools to survive, such as generators, water tanks and bulldozers.

Richard Smith has a Jeep Wrangler full of shovels and rakes. The 56-year-old has lived here almost his entire life. He has been spitting fireballs all week, but sees his mission as the one that calls every neighbor with news about their property.

“This is a very special community,” he said, and choked up.

John Solomito, 63, had his own mission to get home Friday: pick up his favorite hammer. He was not in town when the fire broke out on Bonny Doon earlier this week, so he tried to return Friday but was turned back into his car at a road closure. So he rode his bike 18 miles up steep mountain roads to get here.

“I’m determined,” the construction contractor said. On his surrealistic ride, choke of dense smoke, his eyes burned as he examined the ruin for ruin before arriving at his home. The shed was gone and his truck was burned, but his house was intact. He opened the garage door and found the hammer.

“It’s like an extension of my arm,” he said.

Mug Hammer put his trust in a boat. If the fire got too close, he thought, he could take the boat into the pond behind his father’s house and wait for the flames. By Friday morning, he had barely slept for days.

That’s when the house above his exploded in flames, glass and as rain on his house and his neighbors’. He advised fretically about digging breaks and drowning the fires – and defining the danger of being left behind in Bonny Doon.