With the 6oo-acre Loma Fire now contained, and residents returning to their homes, investigators are trying to figure out what actually caused the blaze.
With the 6oo-acre Loma Fire now contained, and residents returning to their homes, investigators are trying to figure out what actually caused the blaze. According to one Cal Fire commander, it could have been Cal Fire itself. Last week Battalion Chief Darrell Wolf of the agency’s Santa Clara unit said that he saw inmates collect at least 30 piles of dead brush along Summit Road in rural Santa Cruz County as part of an effort to thin vegetation that could fuel brush fires. This was near where the fire is supposed to have erupted, and investigators are now looking into whether the brush piles were the cause of the blaze. A local resident, Frank Deto, says that he saw unattended embers glowing on the hills near his home, but he assumed that Cal Fire was just causing controlled fire as a land management strategy. Generally, he supports this effort, but this time he thinks that the fire crews were getting “a little impatient.”
This is the second time in as many years that the area has been hit by fire.
Read More at the Santa Cruz Sentinel
