By Nicholas Ibarra
Santa Cruz Sentinel
BOULDER CREEK, Calif. — Months after the Bear Fire blazed through 400 acres of the Santa Cruz Mountains, affected residents are replanting, rebuilding and ensuring local firefighters continue to feel their gratitude.
Recent rains have helped clear some of the ash-covered landscape and ushered in fresh shoots of grass and redwood starts. But resident Marvin Hinshaw said Wednesday that the wooded property around his ridge-top home continues to resemble, more than anything else, the surface of the moon.
Firefighters were able to save Hinshaw’s home, but the flames consumed a wood shop full of tools and old-growth wood, a tractor and eight water tanks to the flames.
Another neighbor, Shanti McCormick, said he lost three cars, a fence, water tanks and a solar-power system altogether worth about $87,000.
At least six structures were lost to the 391-acre fire, including two homes.
Still, Hinshaw and many of his neighbors consider themselves lucky. Firefighters were able to defend diverting the flames around homes rather than through them. “They’re our saviors,” Hinshaw said of the hundreds of the firefighters.
Tom Bird, who owns a nearby home above Bear Creek Canyon Road, agreed. “If they hadn’t been here, we just would have had a foundation.”
SURPRISE DELIVERY
At noon Wednesday, Hinshaw, McCormick, Bird and Manuela Raquelle met the Boulder Creek Fire Department for a surprise delivery of one form of gratitude: $4,500 raised by the four homeowners and eight neighbors.
They presented the check to Boulder Creek Fire Chief Kevin McClish, whose department was first to respond the night the fire began.
“I was really surprised,” McClish said. “I knew they were coming, they wanted to meet with me -- I had no idea what for. When he pulled that out of that wrapper, I go, ‘Really? That’s pretty fantastic.’”
McClish said the funds will either go into the department’s general fundraising pool -- used for rescue equipment, medical supplies and other needs -- or could end up contributing to the department’s plan to purchase a wildland engine, a specialized, four-wheel drive engine that he said would be appropriately well suited to battling blazes such as the Bear Fire.
The Bear Fire ignited at about 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 16 at a 30-acre property off of Bear Creek Canyon Road in Boulder Creek, according to authorities. The blaze quickly ran uphill to nearby properties, forcing late-night evacuations of threatened homes and chewing through 391 acres before hundreds of firefighters and workers were able to contain the blaze 10 days later.
Boulder Creek resident Marlon Coy, 54, is accused of lighting the fire after a dispute, and is charged with arson and other crimes, including allegedly returning to the evacuated area to loot property.
Knowing that the fire appears to have been intentionally set is the most difficult part of recovering, Bird said.
He said he has found catharsis by replanting redwood starts on a bulldozed swathe of his property through which he used to enjoy walking.
“Replanting is just kind of my way of processing it,” Bird said. “It does relieve some of the anger. I bury the anger with the trees.”
Copyright 2018 Santa Cruz Sentinel