150 acres burn in area known as Blue Ridge, east of Morgan
Hill
South San Jose – Fire crews were breaking camp at their staging area and heading for home Monday after spending the weekend fighting a 150-acre fire in Henry Coe State Park.
The blaze was located in an area known as Blue Ridge, east of Morgan Hill, the third ridge to the east of the entrance.
There were no injuries as a result of the fire, which began about 5pm Friday. No structures were damaged or destroyed, as the area of the fire is within the state park. The fire was fueled by grass, brush and trees.
The cost of containment is estimated to be “well-over” $1 million, according to Assistant Information Officer Ed Schell.
“The first evening, it was all air,” said Schell with the California Department of Forestry. “Access was the trouble, getting the trucks back in there.”
Helicopters dropped water on the flames from the air throughout the weekend, but Friday night’s effort was focused on the air attack.
Schell said the fire was contained by Sunday, but there will be crews on rotation at the site for a few days. He said it was not clear at the time how many crews had responded to the fire.
“Today, we’ve sent many of them home,” he said Monday, noting that one strike team, which is made up of two crews, remained on scene with two engines and two water trucks. Air support was available if necessary, he added.
The terrain made fighting the fire extremely difficult, he said. There are very few roads that far into the park, mainly hiking trails, he said.
The staging area was set up on the Sobrato High School campus. Summer school started at Sobrato Monday; CDF fire officials were posted at the entrance to the student parking lot, which is at the rear of the school, to keep parents and students out of the lot.
Some parents expressed concern that school would be in session while Department of Corrections prisoners who work with CDF were at the staging area.
Schell said the prisoners are carefully screened before being allowed to participate in the firefighter program, which recruits prisoners a year or two away from the end of their sentence to do “the hard, dirty, scrubby work” at the scene of the fire, supervised by an assigned fire captain.
