I am fine because it is much farther north this time but I am a little worried about mtnwomanbc who lives in Boulder Creek. I hope she checks in as OK. It has been a very dry season with very little rain and it is going to be even drier before we get rain in Nov.
Thanks for caring and asking.
Clare

I'm glad you're okay.

I just talked to my husband (Santa Cruz Fire). He said the city is going back to regular staffing tomorrow and that their is a fog bank sitting on the coast just waiting to roll in. They have been double staffed in anticipation of the fire really blowing up. Hopefully all the firefighters up there are going to get a real handle on it tonight if that fog does come in. The fire is south of Boulder Creek and pushing south from what I've heard. Still it would be nice to hear from her. It's beautiful (over grown) country up there with a lot of homes tucked in. The pictures in the paper make me so sad. Many are taken right from my old neighborhood. We are a fire family and I still can't stand to see it.

(I hate when I use the wrong there)
I didn't mean to say that because DH's department was going back to regular staffing that the fire was not that bad. It is a difficult fire.

Hi! Checking in...Clare sent me an email wondering about our situation. The Bonny Doon fire is about 10 miles south of me, no danger to me, but we have friends about a quarter mile west of the fire, just off Bonny Doon Rd, so I am worried about them.

One thing did happen on Wednesday late afternoon. While commuting home, the local SF bay area radio station I usally listen to for traffic and news reported a new fire in Boulder Creek--they reported it twice, with no details. So obviously I was very anxious driving home. Our house is toward the top of a side canyon that would act very much like a chimney should a fire occur. I got home and checked the news on TV and on-line (radio reception lousy at the house). No news about any BC fire. In the meantime, my adrenaline was pumping, so I gathered up important stuff in a couple of laundry baskets, got the cat carriers out, just in case... DH was out of town, so I didn't have him to help calm me down.

Finally, after not hearing anything at all about a BC fire, I called the local fire station (not 911), and sure enough, there was no fire. As glad I was to hear that, I was also very upset for the radio station broadcasting that brief message about a BC fire, twice, erroneously. I called them and gave them a piece of my mind! Told them to verify upsetting information like that before broadcasting it.

The radio station did it again tonight!!! Now I know why they called it a Boulder Creek fire -- evidently that's the name the National Weather Service is calling the Bonny Doon fire.

I am so freaking tired of the media not fact checking before they spew. Since the first Summit fire I've seen erroneous news reports on TV,seen wrong fire maps on the net heard all kinds of wrong reports over the radio.

I knew about the cause of the Summit fire early on because a firefighter I bumped into at a local Target told me.

I panicked earlier today over hearing of the Boulder Creek fire because not only does Mtnwomanbc live there but so does my DS's GF's mother. I called him right away and he said "what fire? I'm on a ride. There's no fire."

Now they are reporting the glow and the dark smoke over the Santa Clara county hills are from the Big Sur fire.

I'm glad you're okay, mtnwoman. Thanks for checking in.

wildchild - What was the cause of the Summit fire? I never heard anything about it on the news. Thanks.

We had an orange sky from mid afternoon till late because of all the smoke. It gave everything an orange color. It was kind of freaky and erie. We went out this morning and everything is covered in ash. At first when DH looked at his car he couldn't figure out what it was then we looked around and all the patio furniture and everything is covered in this black and white powder. We will have to wash it all off because it is high acid and can harm the paint, at least on the car.
Clare

Clare I am in the bay area and everything here is covered in ash too.
The sky was really eerie looking at dawn. Last night the smoke was drifting over us.
There are just so many fires burning in the state now that the sky is full of smoke.

Last night driving home from SJ it was like a dark cocoa colored miasma was making it's way up from Salinas area. Not much directly over my car, but I did notice a few flakes falling, I figured it was ash. Pretty nice today in BC, though, thank goodness.

wildchild -- please do spill the beans re: cause of Summit fire. I keep thinking about that poor man who spent his life building the perfect Victorian house (exact replica of the one that used to be The Chart House in Los Gatos), out of his own funds, and had no insurance. If there is an identifiable human culprit (criminal or not), maybe he could have some civil court recourse.

The fire was started by a legally permitted burn. Unfortunately having a permit doesn't guarantee some fool(s) will do the job properly and safely. The guy left some hot spots and the winds picked up and ignited them. At least that's the theory. The news has since picked up the story but no names have been published of course. I'm sure his immediate neighbors would know. I mean how many "controlled" burns happen in a given area each week?

My living room faces south and last evening the north end of the house was still lit by daylight but the front was absolute gloom. I stepped outside and it looked like a scene from a sci fi movie.

And I just found this article about the burn. Summit fire

You can't get a fire permit in Santa Cruz county after April 30th. Regulations But the article says he was on the Santa Clara side. It might have been legal there after April.

When we first moved here our neighbor use to burn his vineyard prunings. Boy was that smoky! And it always made me nervous.
Clare

We're getting smoke from the fires in Butte County which is about 40 minutes north of us. The skies were so gray today. I'm sure glad the wind stopped because that sure wasn't helping at all.

wildchild -- I know what you mean about it feeling like a sci fi movie -- everyone in the shopping center who came out of their cars or out of a store first stopped to stare at the brown sky, mesmerized for a few minutes, taking cellphone pix, before continuing on with whatever. It wasn't just brown smog/smoke/inversion layer -- it was like a humongous brown fog moving in, creating a pall over everything.