The air in Palo Colorado was eerily cool and still on Sunday afternoon around 5pm, despite the 11,000-acre Soberanes Fire raging just across the canyon.
The landscape was shielded by a thick layer of smoke overhead, keeping wind and sun at bay, good news for efforts to control the fire. Wind was finally cooperating enough to keep the smoke layer in place instead of blowing it off.
“It’s capping the fire, like putting a pot over a lid,” said Kim Bernheisel, fire captain at the Carmel Highlands Fire District. “And what happens when you take the lid off?”
Bernheisel looked on as the fire backed down over a ridge on the southern slope of Palo Colorado, near the top of the canyon.
Fire moves much slower downhill than uphill, but still, burning chunks of material roll down, ignite dried-out vegetation, then start burning up the hill in bursts of flame.
Related
The best way for the greater community to help is by donating money. Here are a handful of tax-deductible ways to do that.
The next night, residents who live miles down the canyon didn’t know whether their homes were still standing, and information was spotty. They relied on eyewitness accounts from neighbors who stayed, and fire maps that showed a blotchy red spot continuing to creep south, east and north, threatening even more neighborhoods. As the Weekly went to press, part of the Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel Valley had been evacuated. The fire had grown to 23,568 acres, and was still only 10-percent contained.
And there emerged a real human toll: As of this writing, one bulldozer driver died in a rollover.
That provided context for what one man told a Cal Fire captain as he drove away from his Corona Road home above Carmel Highlands, “Be safe. It’s just a fucking house.”
A fire of this scale poses tactical challenges for firefighters, and tests individuals and communities. In these pages, we aim to tell those stories – to convey the fear and hardship, but also residents’ eagerness to rebuild.