Rebuilding process begins with utility restoration - Santa Cruz Sentinel
SCOTTS VALLEY — The road to recovery will be winding, littered with downed trees and crossed power lines.
Even as some limited evacuation orders issued in response to the CZU August Lightning Complex Incident were lifted this week, some 50,000 residents remained displaced from their homes Friday morning, Cal Fire officials said. According to information from the Santa Cruz County Damage Assessment Map, with some 70% of the county’s damaged properties surveyed, there had been 554 single-family residences out of 788 total structures destroyed countywide by the fires.
In a newsletter Friday, 3rd District County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty said he was working with 5th District Supervisor Bruce McPherson to ease the rebuilding process in the wake of the fires. Ahead of Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the two are asking that county Planning, Public Works and Environmental Health staff develop a streamlined permitting process, including a cap on permit fees, allowance for residents to live in temporary housing at their homesite while they rebuild and development of a comprehensive website similar to what the County of Sonoma put together after their fires in 2017, Coonerty wrote.
Meanwhile, personnel from utilities scrambled behind firefighters to restore water, power, phone and road services across some 83,000 acres. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. reported fire-related power outages to 6,085 customers, as of Friday morning, while the Santa Cruz County Public Works Department reported 18 county roads closed since the fires first broke out Aug. 16.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Chris Clark described the plan to repopulate evacuated portions of the county — concentrated in the San Lorenzo Valley, Bonny Doon and along Highway 1 north from Santa Cruz to the border with San Mateo County — as systematic and thorough.
“Because in these mountains, you know, it’s limited opportunity for ingress and egress. So, there’s only certain ways in and out. So we want to do this systematic and we also want to do it when it’s safe, when there’s infrastructure to support safety and to support people being able to live in those areas,” Clark said during a press conference Wednesday night in Scotts Valley. “We take information from our fire partners and put these plans together. They’re trying to put out a fire, but at the same time, you’ve got PG&E up there trying to restore lines and lines are dropped everywhere, if you’ve seen pictures. And then there were tree services today up there marking trees and trying to fell trees to make the roads a little more passable. There’s a lot of roadwork to be done.”
Tree work
According to Caltrans spokesman Kevin Drabinski, the state awarded Granite Construction a $6 million emergency project Wednesday to clear, repair and restore fire-impacted Highway 1, Highway 9 and Highway 236. Crews on Friday were meeting, planning and reviewing work to be accomplished and mobilizing contractors and subcontractors to address the damage, Drabinski said. Much of the fires’ damage has been concentrated on Highway 236, he said.
“So far we know we have hundreds of fallen trees, likely about a dozen locations of burned guardrail, numerous destroyed roadside signs and markers, at least one location of burned insulation on a retaining wall on the upper reaches of Highway 236,” Drabinski said. “Crews are actively reviewing the impacted routes.”
Cal Fire Incident Command Billy See, when asked Thursday morning which county roads had been most heavily impacted said it remained a day-by-day assessment. As the ground starts to cool, he said, trees’ root systems are starting to burn out.
“A lot of those are unknown dangers to a lot of us, so when they start coming down and we start seeing the depth of char underneath the ground, that turns into a major concern for our firefighters,” See said.
Cal Fire Section Chief Mark Brunton said Wednesday night that firefighters had already faced numerous hazardous trees during their work.
“We’ve had a number of trees fall across Felton Empire Grade Road. We’ve had to bring in our specialty crews to open up the road, cut those trees down,” Brunton said. “And also we’re going in and eliminating any of the hazard trees, the ones that are burning out, that could pose a hazard to our personnel or any of the utility company folks that are working in that area to start restoring that infrastructure, which they are doing on our heals as we open up the roadways throughout the fire and also the (Highway) 236 corridor. We’re working with Caltrans so that we can move deeper and get into the park and then the utility company’s coming behind to start setting up their infrastructure to restore.”
Watershed damages
San Lorenzo Valley Water District’s board of directors has held three emergency meetings since the fires spread, passing a declaration of emergency and a water shortage emergency Aug. 24. In an agenda report for a meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon, the laundry list of water system damages was extensive, with some $200,000 initially being considered as a set-aside to make emergency repairs. Among the big-ticket impacts were damages to three tanks holding about 4.5 million gallons of water, roughly 51.5% of the district’s total water storage, according to an agency release, and some 5 miles of above-ground pipeline have likely been destroyed.
The district’s administrative and operations office buildings in Boulder Creek did not experience fire damage, officials said. Of the district’s watershed area, some 1,620 acres of land on Ben Lomond Mountain and the Felton Empire Grade Watershed have burned and 175 customer water meters destroyed, according to the district.
Though the city of Santa Cruz avoided fire damage, its water services have been endangered by the fires, according to the Santa Cruz Water Department. Most city water sources and critical infrastructure, such as the Newell Creek Dam and the Graham Hill Water Treatment Plant, are in wooded areas very close to, or within, the CZU fire lines.
“About 18% of the total 73,000 acres of watershed above our intake at Tait Street has been affected by the fire,” an Aug. 27 newsletter from the Water Department reads. “There has also been damage in the Laguna Creek watershed, but we don’t have a damage assessment yet. Laguna is an important source for our fisheries protection and enhancement efforts this time of year, and is used during the off-peak season when winter storms cause San Lorenzo River water to be too turbid to treat.”
CZU August Lightning Complex
• Acres burned: 82,540 acres.
• Containment: 26%.
• Started: Aug. 16.
• Location: Various locations across Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties.
• Cause: Lightning.
• Personnel: 2,019 firefighters.
• Structures: 799 destroyed (788 in Santa Cruz County); 13,300 threatened.
• Evacuations: 50,000 people evacuated.
Source: Cal Fire.
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