Update (1pm, Oct. 16)
The Cal Fire San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit (CZU) announced that the evacuation orders put in place Friday evening in response to the Estrada Fire have been changed to evacuation warnings.
It also announced that the fire was 25% contained.
ORIGINAL STORY
WATSONVILLE—Firefighters battling a blaze that stemmed from a “prescribed burn” at a property in the Watsonville foothills made progress on containment overnight, Cal Fire San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit (CZU) Division Chief Angela Bernheisel said.
According to Bernheisel, the Estrada Fire is, as of early Saturday, 10% contained, and the containment level is expected to rise today.
The fire, measured at around 150 acres last night by aircrews, is roughly 83 acres, Bernheisel said. Crews will get a better estimate today, as they “mop up” the blaze.
Bernheisel also said that Cal Fire CZU had hoped to make enough headway on the fire to lift evacuation orders later today.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies asked residents east of Hazel Dell Road up to Summit Road to leave their property around 6pm Friday, some three hours after Cal Fire CZU had lost control of a burn up at the sprawling Estrada Ranch.
Bernheisel said that embers from burning brush spread outside the fireline “where the wind was just enough to carry it a little too much beyond what we can control.”
A prescribed burn, also called controlled burn, is the intentional use of fire to clear away dried vegetation that acts as fuel for wildfires. Bernheisel said that this prescribed burn was part of the agency’s Vegetation Treatment Program in which Cal Fire works with private landowners to reduce fuels in hopes of preventing large-scale fires.
It was one of a series of prescribed burns planned at Estrada Ranch that Cal Fire had brokered after at least a couple of years of working with the property owner, Bernheisel said. They planned to burn some 20 acres Friday, according to a press release, and further reduced the size of the burn as the day went on.
“At the end of the day, that’s when they got a little too much heat in the burn and it started some fires across the line,” Bernheisel said. “And with the resources that they had there, they just weren’t able to pick it up … luckily resources were ready and available … we got everything that we asked for.”
Bernheisel said Cal Fire CZU had not yet determined a containment day. She said that firefighters are expected to be in the area for “several days” because some embers spread into “heavy timber.”
“We hadn’t planned to burn in the redwoods, but that’s where it ended up going,” she said. “That’s going to be the tricky part: getting that 100% mopped up so it doesn’t cause us any issues.”
Temperatures in Watsonville reached 87 degrees Friday, and the heat was expected to stick around today.
Photos of the fire and smoke visible from both Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties flooded social media starting around 3:40pm.
