CORRALITOS — For the second time in less than a week, local fire crews battled a wildfire in the dense forest and steep terrain above Corralitos and managed to prevent serious spread or significant damage.
According to an incident report from the Cal Fire CZU San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit, emergency responders were dispatched just after 7 a.m. Monday to a vegetation fire off of Buzzard Lagoon Road, which runs close to The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. The road is approximately 4.8 miles from the South County enclave’s community center that is home to various events and community gatherings throughout the year.
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The rural road narrows as it meanders deeper into the hills and eventually turns into a system of trails. As a result, an Alma Helitack 614 helicopter from Cal Fire’s Santa Clara Unit was called in and began to aggressively make water drops while also communicating to crews on the ground where the fire erupted.
Additional helicopters were called in to douse the flames with enormous buckets of water alongside a fixed wing aircraft that blanketed the landscape with red fire retardant.
Because of how slender the roads are in the region, only Type 3 fire engines — built to traverse rugged, off-road terrain — were able to access the fire. Other crews on foot were forced to hike a half mile from Buzzard Lagoon Road to access the incident and didn’t come face to face with the blaze for about 1.5 hours to two hours as a result.
The fire burned in heavy timber, brush and areas where decaying branches and leaf litter, also known as duff, had accumulated. However, wind conditions were light, which helped crews limit the fire to less than 2 acres with no structures burned and no injuries reported.
The response was also mounted on familiar footing. Only six days prior, firefighters rushed to contain three fires in the same region above Corralitos off of Eureka Canyon Road. Those fires were all contained to less than an acre each, but 36-year-old Isaac Tayrien was arrested the same day as the incidents and charged with felony arson of an inhabited structure and felony arson of open land, among other infractions.
County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Zach West told the Sentinel Tuesday that the fire incidents are completely separate and that Tayrien has been in custody ever since he was arrested last week.
The cause of Monday’s fire remains under investigation, according to the Cal Fire release. Other crews that responded to the Monday incident were Scotts Valley Fire District, Central Fire District and Cal Fire’s BEU San Benito-Monterey Unit.