 Good evening. Welcome to the 6pm press conference here on the CZU lightning complex. My name is Jonathan Cox, Deputy Chief for Cal Fire San Mateo Santa Cruz unit and line officer on the incident. As always, if you could just keep your cell phones muted, take any conversations outside of the press conference area and wear masks at all times. We will have a moment at the end of this press conference to ask individual questions of the speakers who are up here. As always, just a quick update on the incident. As of 6pm this evening, the CZU lightning complex is 84,338 acres. Containment went up to 33%. There are still 9,374 structures that are threatened by the fire. And unfortunately we can confirm that 1094 structures have been destroyed. Of that 1094 structures, 20 of those are in San Mateo County, which includes six single family residents. In Santa Cruz County, 74 structures have been destroyed. Of those 720 of them are single family residents. Over 40,000 people remain evacuated and there are over 2,100 firefighting personnel now here on the lines. On an unrelated note today, we had a structure fire and vegetation fire in the 10,000 block of West Drive in Lompeco. That was an unrelated fire that completely destroyed one structure and about a quarter acre of vegetation. With that with an update on the operations here on the incident, Operation Section Chief Mark Brunton from Cal Fire Incident Management Team 3. Good evening. So another really good day with our fire suppression efforts. Today a lot of the activity up in the north zone in Branch 1. As I've been saying over the past few days, the fire has been progressing down towards our lines. And today we ended up doing a burning operation to try to expedite that. It's been kind of a slow process. So we wanted to kind of get that cleaned up so we can reduce that risk to the fire lines and that threat to the fire lines. So a lot more active burning there today, especially before we start getting into that warmer and drier weather and change in our wind pattern. So we wanted to institute that tactic so that we could mitigate that risk. Moving down the coast, still a lot of heavy mop up along the Highway 1 corridor and that's going to continue to be that way for the coming days. Davenport with some of the repopulation and so forth. We had a good burnout operation yesterday in 7th Centai Canyon that really sealed up that part of the fire and rendered it safe. So that's looking really good down there. Just again, a lot of mop up in that area. South end of the fire is looking very good, holding very well and a continued mop up. Moving up the Highway 9 corridor around the Camilla Fulton is looking really good and repopulation going on in those areas. And then moving up the Highway 9 corridor and continuing to establish those control lines up along Highway 9. That's going to render that more safe. Again, a lot of difficult terrain, the steep terrain, the fuels, the heavy fuels. We've had a couple areas that again had the sloppovers due to the burning in that duff and through the root systems that we experienced throughout the days and will experience moving forward up in that Branch 1 area where they did the burn operation. They had about a 10 acre able to control that and incorporate it within our burn operation. And then down in just Boulder Creek, a very small one that we were able to pick up. We have active patrols of our personnel in there as well as the continuing line construction. So they made good work with that. Again, Bonnie Doon, a lot of hard work in there and continued work still ongoing and it's going to be an ongoing challenge for us in that in that area. As we get more resources, we're plugging them right in and they're going to work and mitigating as they go. Our air program. Again, the weather didn't really cooperate as much so we couldn't really time out our aircraft. But we did have a significant amount of flight time when we could get them up. A lot of water dropping missions. A lot of that was to support the burnout operation in the north part of the fire in the north zone. But some of the others also various parts of the fire targets of opportunity and so forth with the weather coming up about mid to later week. We're starting to see as that pushes off and off. About Wednesday, Thursday, we're looking at drier weather, hotter weather and a change of our wind pattern to a northly pattern. So it gives us a few more days to continue strengthen our lines, put in our control efforts and mitigate any potential for any more spread of the fire or any sort of slopp over of our lines. Speaking next from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office is Chief Deputy Chris Clark. Good evening. Another good day today. We we welcome back the folks in Felton and Davenport. I know they were anxious to get back home and and so we were we were happy to to assist in making that happen. And as I've said before, you know, it's kind of a day by day process right and getting people back home. But I just want to also preface that there's a lot of the county that still that still has a lot of it's still very heavily damaged. And and that's really the Boulder Creek and Bonnie Dune area. So I want you to know that progress is it's it's going on. It's a daily, daily effort in making sure those roads are safe that utilities are there. So for the folks that live in Bonnie Dune, really the heavily affected fire areas while while these folks are going home, I want you to know that and we want you to know that that things are taking place in those areas. And they're moving as fast as possible because we want to get you home. And so I just want to let you know that there's a lot of people working very diligently to make that happen. In other positive news or no arrest or site or citations today. We also had no burglaries. And so I think that's that's also something to note for people that are at home. Is that so far we are not necessarily at home but people that are displaced from this fire is knowing that is that so far, you know, having our police presence in the area, we haven't seen any burglaries yet. And I hope that continues. And so that's something we obviously are in the area looking around patrolling and trying to make sure that that your property is safe. And so with that 71 people today is the as the number of staff we had driving around ensuring security the evacuated areas 40 of our personnel nine from in County 22 mutual aid from over the hill tonight. We're gonna have 45 deputies and officers that'll be patrolling 21 from us eight from in the county and 16 mutual aid. So again, just we couldn't do this without without our other partners here in the county and over the hill and we definitely thank them for their assistance in this. In terms of calls for service, we've had we responded to four suspicious people and one welfare check. We still have just the one missing person. And again, as I mentioned last night that that person was reported missing. They haven't seen the person hasn't been seen since before the fire started but was recently reported missing. So our detectives are telling us that they don't believe necessarily this person is going to be a fire victim but nonetheless, we want to make sure we find them on another topic. So there was an incident a couple days ago with regards to some pipe bombs that were located in the Boulder Creek area near the golf course and 100 block of Lake Lake Drive. And so yesterday our late yesterday afternoon, our detectives arrested 34 year old Andrew Pace. There's a Boulder Creek resident for that. And so he faces charges of manufacturing explosive device. And so he'll be arraigned and obviously go through the court process with that. Something else that came up today and it came up yesterday a little bit too. And I just want to kind of reiterate this. So route, when you're when you're coming back home, and again, we want you to get back home in the most efficient manner possible. Because, you know, like we've said, it's, you know, we can't imagine how frustrating this is for people that have been displaced. And we want to get you home as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And so part of that is just planning a route and really knowing where those those CHP hard closures are. And so I just want to reiterate CHP's CHP Santa Cruz's Facebook page. They have all of the hard road closures. I hear Cal Fire is working with with ways to populate those road closures within ways. I have heard that they do they are somewhat popping up in Google Maps and Apple Maps, but I checked earlier, and it didn't seem as consistent. So I think if you're going to plan your route back home, if I if that was me, I would be looking at CHP Santa Cruz's Facebook page, and then taking a look at where those hard closures are and then planning my route from there. And then in terms of traffic, lastly, just understand to that if you're coming back to Felton, coming back to Davenport, you're going to see still a lot of emergency vehicles. And so there's still a lot of traffic that's going to be in in and around that area. So just keep that in mind. There's this fire is still not 100% contained as you heard 33%, which is great. But there's still a lot of work to do. And as I said, especially in those areas that were heavily impacted by fire. And so just please please be mindful of those emergency vehicles. And then lastly, just also in the conjunction of that, in terms of the fire, just paying attention to Cal Fire's website and making sure that you understand kind of what's going on with the fire because any things could change, but but keeping a prize of that and what the fire is doing will only keep you better informed and safer. Thank you. Next, from the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office is Detective Blankswood. Good evening. For San Mateo County, we have deputies driving around with Cal Fire to do damage and inspection evaluations. They're going to be identifying the damage properties. As you heard from Chief Cox today, we did jump from 11 to 20. And that's just due to these teams going out there are actually in the field and doing these assessments. So we will continue to work with public works to identify any roads or infrastructure that need repairing. And also any trees that are unstable in the area of San Mateo County. County parks close the gate at War Road and Old Hole Road. So be cautious of that. Additionally, Portola State Park is also closed. We're going to continue to assess areas outside the burn zones to determine whether or not people who were evacuated from these areas can soon return. That's going to be ongoing for the next week or so. So your patience is definitely appreciated. We continue to do safety and security checks over the past 24 hours. We've had 44 personnel going around doing the safety and security checks. 10 of them were volunteers, 14 were deputies, 10 were CHP Redwood City officers and eight were support staff. So thank you to Redwood City CHP for assisting us with that. Again, we're still asking people not to visit the coast this weekend. As you heard from Chief Brunton, we are expecting drier weather later this week so things could rapidly change on the coast side. And we want to leave these roadways open for people who actually live and work there for everyone's safety. Thank you very much. That's all we have. Speaking next from the Cal Fire San Mateo Santa Cruz unit is unit chief Ian Larkin. Good evening. As you heard today, we're making some more success. 33% contained. Cruiser out there working very, very hard to make progress on the fire as we move through this process of trying to get the fire contained. The collaboration and cooperation that's going on with all the resources and the agencies on this fire is just insurmountable. It's just it's a feat that I'm proud to be a part of. I've never seen anything like this in my career of having this much cooperation with with really little issues that have come up. So we continue to work through that. The obviously the structure loss our damaged inspection teams are out there working diligently. There are still certain areas of the fire that are too dangerous for them to make access as we continue to move forward making that more safe for their inspection. We'll get those finish up that report for that and we're approximately 79% of that effort is is completed. So we'll continue with that as we move forward. One thing we mentioned, we started repopulating more areas of the county with felt and mean repopulated. There's more cars going to be in the general area where we have fire apparatus and law enforcement working diligently out there to protect the citizens. So please be cautious. Use a good judgment when you're driving on the roadways and pay attention for those large vehicles that are going to be out there. It could be a dangerous situation for yourself if you're not. So please be patient with us as we work through the final phases of this to get everybody back home and start that recovery process even more so than we are now. So thank you. Our final speaker this evening is from the Santa Cruz County EOC and it really is important as we transition from the mitigation phase of this fire to the recovery phase to really start to highlight the work that's going on at the emergency operation center specific to how people can recover from this emergency. So I'm happy to welcome from the EOC here in Santa Cruz County EOC Pio Jason Hoppin. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Today we are very pleased to open our recovery resource center. It is a multi jurisdiction multi agency one stop center for people who have been impacted by the fire so that they can begin the recovery process. It will be open 11 to 7 daily. It is located at the Kaiser Permanente Arena in downtown Santa Cruz at 140 front street. That's the Santa Cruz Warriors Stadium. So we're very thankful to them for offering that venue to us. And I just want to give you a partial list of some of the agencies that are there so far. We have FEMA, Cal OES, Contractor State License Board, Department of Insurance, Second Harvest Food Bank in case you need to sign up for CalFresh or other benefits. Assessors office is there. Obviously a lot of homes have been damaged or destroyed. So there's going to be a change in your tax situation. Human services, public works, planning, environmental health, which is very important for the debris removal process. The resource conservation district is there to give you advice on the property management after a fire. American Red Cross is there, Employment Development Department, DMV, Vital Records. All that stuff is there. If you need any services come down. There's a bunch of tables set up. You can move from one table to the next and hopefully knock off a lot of your needs. I also want to point out that we have set up a lot of these services online. So if you go to Santa Cruz County dot US, look for the tab. There's a fire recovery tab. Click on that and you'll find a link to the virtual recovery center. So a lot of these services are available online and you can access those there as well. I also want to point out that we have set up a hotline. We have several hundred residents still in a program that is offered by FEMA and managed by the State Department of General Services. They're staying in hotels or evacuees. The hotline number is 831-454-2181. If you're trying to get into the program, we're asking you to go to a shelter and fill out a form. Our shelters are also available on our website. But if you have been, if you are staying in a hotel and you're in a repopulated area, you have 24 hours to check out. If you have not been repopulated, if you're still evacuated, you can stay in your hotel. But they work on seven day reservation cycle. So if you're nearing the end of your cycle, we ask you to re-up and call that number and get some information on how to go ahead and do that. Lastly, I want to just note that we're starting to step down our donations process a little bit starting Monday. We are still taking donations, but we'll be doing it at reduced hours from 10 to 4. You can still bring by water, sleeping new clothes, new blankets, things like that, non-perishable food. One drop off location is our warehouse at 1082 Emmeline Street in Santa Cruz. And there's another one at 114 Walker in Watsonville. I believe they're also unofficially helping people who arrive at those warehouses with goods if they need them. But if you need to pick up something, if you've been impacted by the fire to show up at one of our shelter sites and you can access some of those donations at those places too. Thank you. All right, with that, we're happy to answer any questions you might have. Is there any sort of time frame of when people would be able to go back? Yeah, so the question was related to is there a set time frame for returning to the areas that are still evacuated? And we don't want to give anybody false hopes or false promises. And what we can say right now is it's day by day the evaluation of all of these zones. And it's, you know, the intricacies of orders going on up there at the moment between utilities, roads, power lines, trees. It would be really inappropriate for us to speculate right now on what that might be. So the best answer we can give people is it's day by day the evaluation based on all those criteria and safety. And just to stay tuned for for when that information comes out. Randy Gordon, KBCZ, Boulder Creek Community Radio. Can you give us any information about the mail and what people can do about what they should be and can be doing about getting their mail? Sure, I think, and Jason, I don't want to put you on the spot with this one, but if we don't have the answer, we can definitely follow up with that as far as how people can get their mail and where they can get it redirected to. We'll follow up with you on that. If you live in the valley, they're asking you to go to Watsonville to pick up your mail. They were asking people in Scott's Valley, which has been repopulated to go to Santa Cruz, so I don't know if that's really relevant before. My understanding is they're holding packages over so people should be prepared for that. You're just going to get your letters. But you can pick them up at Watsonville Post Office. Jason, do you want to come up here and just give that to Kim? My understanding is that the post office is holding mail for people that live in the San Lorenzo Valley at the Watsonville Post Office. So you can go there. Give yourself a little time. I understand there's lines, but they're holding mail at this point. I don't think they're giving out parcels last I heard, and I have no information from the post office on when that's going to start or how that's going to be managed. But if you are looking for your mail and you live in the San Lorenzo Valley, please go to the Watsonville Post Office. And if individuals don't want to pick up their mail, will their mail automatically be delivered to them once they're repopulated? I do not know. I'm sorry. I don't know the answer to that question. It's a post office issue. I'll try to find out. All right, so just to reiterate, I think it's really important what Jason's brought up tonight is just how vital that recovery website is and the resources they have in the county. As we continue to reinforce and build the lines out on the fire, the focus really is now transitioning to what recovery looks like and what the community needs for as far as resources. So with that everyone up here is available for one on one questions. This concludes the six PM press conference. Thanks for joining us.