 Good morning. Welcome to the 6am press conference here on the CZU Lightning Complex. I'm Jonathan Cox, Deputy Chief for Cal Fire San Mateo Santa Cruz Unit and the line officer here out on the incident. Just a few things as usual. If you can please mute your telephones, take any conversations outside the press briefing area as well as keep your masks on as much as possible. There will be a time at the end of this press conference for questions and answers with the representatives that are up here. Just a few things. A quick update on the fire. The fire grew. It's 78,000 acres as of 6 o'clock this morning. It is now 13% contained. So we continue to make good strides to increase that containment. However, there still are 24,300 structures that are threatened around the fire area. And we can now confirm that 231 structures have been destroyed both throughout Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. And we have a more specific breakdown of that that we can get you later this morning. We continue to increase the number of firefighters that are arriving every day. We're up to 1511 firefighters, federal, state, local government, including ones from out of state here on this incident. One thing to note is there was an evacuation warning that went out in Santa Clara County yesterday afternoon. That warning went out in an abundance of caution based on the potential lightning and storms that that were forecasted for yesterday. We do not believe there's any imminent threat over to the Santa Clara County side right now. I just wanted to help clarify that because obviously that's a whole new county credit right by us. With that, I think it's time for an operations update from Cal Fire Incident Management Team Operations Section Chief Mark Brown. Good morning. So the past 24 hours, albeit we are in a red flag warning, we've actually had the opportunity, the weather isn't been as significant as we were expecting, which is good. And that has given us an opportunity for our crews to make a lot of great progress throughout this fire. So starting in our north zone part of the fire again, a lot of it, a lot of good work up there. You see this XCM on the line, and that's a control line that's been established and verified. So we have a really good set of control lines being on the north end of the fire throughout the entire north and then down on the coast, some of the fires, it's actually self mitigated in the fact that it's burning some lighter fuels and with the increase in the humidities and so forth, the fires actually extinguish itself. So that's very good. Round down port haven't seen any movement of the fire. It is still hung up on the ridge top. It's something that once we get more resources, we're going to go directly after, but we do have a good control line around that community and protecting that community as well. On the south end of the fire, we have continued to improve the control lines along the south end. We have this really good control line that runs from Highway 1 to Highway 9. We have a secondary that we put in. We did a little burnout operation in that southern part of the Bonnie Dune area, and that widened and improved our line tremendously. So it created a very good control line to the south primary and then a secondary. So that really, really puts an excellent protection for Santa Cruz and the UC campus. I won't say that they're completely 100% out of any sort of danger, but we are very confident that these lines are going to hold and do what we need them to do. Moving up the fire in the Fulton area, fire is still well up on the ridge. Fulton is still looking pretty good. Again, we proceed with caution with the weather event as we continue through that until that is completed with the red flag warning, the Highway 9 corridor. The thing about that, we've been able to establish some lines and continue to establish some lines. Are they as robust as we'd like them to be? No, absolutely not. They're primary. They were established very rapidly to try to keep the fire in check. We're just kind of doing, you know, a bump and run type technique, and a technique in which we just try to push or hurt the fire, like I've said before. So with that, it's not the kind of line that we would traditionally put in where it's very robust, solid, and it's going to hold fire and then we can follow up with other suppression tactics. So therefore with that, and due to the topography, very steep, extremely rugged terrain, lots of ravines and canyons and that sort of thing, drainages, very difficult for us to work in. It's not how we traditionally establish our lines. Not where we'd like to put our lines. They give us the best advantage, but we do with what we're dealt and we're giving it our best shot based on that. So we'll work with what we put in the best we can. As a result of that, what we're going to see, and you will see, we'll have little setbacks here and there. There's nothing that's pushing or threatening directly to the community, but people may see, now that the air is cleared a little bit more, some flames and so forth. That's going to be normal. You're going to see that because we have not fully extinguished this fire. We're far from that at this point. Again, heavy fuels, this rugged terrain, to put those lines in to hold them and establish them is going to take time. So there has to be a bit of patience, but any flirts that we do get, we move our resources back there. We fall back as we can, take care of these things where the hot material may roll out there under the steep terrain, burn back up into the burn itself. That's going to happen. You're going to see that, but it's something that we can easily jump upon and we can start mitigating and keep it from getting further down onto the Highway 9 corridor. There are a few points where it's come down and touch the Highway 9 corridor in areas without structures. That's fine. Highway 9 is a good place to kind of stop that, and part of the fire is extinguished. So now that brings a nice solid control line, if you will, right there along Highway 9 as well. So we're going to continue that. That process is going to be painstakingly long. It's going to take time. It's going to take a lot of effort, take a lot of work to do it, to stop a very solid control line from working diligently to do that. Body dune area, again, very difficult because of the number of structures that are dispersed throughout that area. A lot of vegetation, again, a lot of very steep and rugged terrain in various parts of that. So a painstaking process, a slow process, but we are continually working on that. Our crews are making advancements every day to make that more safe and getting the community back on his feet. Speaking next from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office is Chief Deputy Clark. Good morning. So in terms of Sheriff's Office activity last night, we again, burglary suppression was our priority with welfare checks and checking on different folks as those calls came in. In terms of total calls for service, how many calls did we get? 10 suspicious people were called in as well as two welfare checks, and we sent deputies out on both of those. Our missing persons, that count stands at four. We still have four missing people that we're trying to determine where they are. In terms of our activity when it comes to the miss or sorry, when it comes to the suspicious, suspicious people who did make three arrests last night, as I've said before, and I'll continue to say that we have a lot of personnel. And last night we had a lot of personnel today moving forward. We're gonna have 79 total personnel, 33 from our office. And again, I can't speak more highly of our of our local agencies and agencies over the hill that contributed 46 that total today. So 79 total personnel that'll be out looking for people that should not be in the evacuation area or looking to pray on other people who've already evacuated. So kind of in that vein last night there were there were three people or four people rather three in which we arrested two people arrested, contacted. They had warrants. They were they were taken to jail, arrested for those warrants and then also charged with being in a closed evacuation area as well as as well as a lady that was seen walking around with a backpack. She was from San Francisco, not from the area and was arrested for being in a closed evacuation area. And then we also cited a person last night who is from the area but wasn't supposed to be here and he was he was escorted out and then I wanted to touch real quickly. So we've gotten a number of calls with regards to the city of Santa Cruz. And so the city of Santa Cruz did kind of like a pre warning. I believe they went door to door. Great thing to be prepared. But there's no I wanted to reiterate there's no imminent fire danger right now to the city of Santa Cruz. And so, you know, Cal Fire's done a great job of kind of securing that southern border as long as the weather stays the way that it should and the conditions say the way it should. There should not be an imminent danger or at least there's not right now to the city of Santa Cruz. And then lastly has been a lot of interest in the wallet that was stolen from the from the firefighter. And again, I think we're all kind of blown away that somebody would actually, you know, you know, steal from someone that's out there trying to help. But we have a detective and are dedicated to that case. We're looking into it. We're running down leads. And I guarantee if we can find out who did this, that person's going to jail. So anyway, that's a that's an update on our activity. Thank you. Speaking next from the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office is Sal Zuno. Good morning. No sick right now. No significant changes for San Mateo County. However, we did have an incident yesterday where six people did enter a restricted area to check on their property. And the end result is they had to be rescued. They snuck into an area that was restricted. They were surprised by the fire. And we had to redirect resources to get these people out. We understand that when people are evacuated, they're very anxious of a concern for the properties. And that's why we have law enforcement protecting those areas and keeping them secure 24 seven. Please help us. If you if you're there's a restricted area, do not enter it. Because then what happens is we have to redirect resources. Those you put those responders an additional risk and you put yourself in a risk for injury. So other than that, you know, we're working very hard around the clock to make sure that you guys are given the information up to date. Anything significant that you know about it. And we're putting information out on all social media channels and for San Mateo County. If you want more information, you can download our app for either Android or iPhone at San Mateo County Sheriff's dot com. Thank you. Speaking next one of the unified incident commanders Cal fire incident management team three incident commander Billy C. Good morning. Obviously, over the last 48 hours, we've had a lot of success, a lot of small winds and they're starting out up to larger winds on this incident. We continue to increase our personnel numbers assigned to this incident as well as engines and crews. And we will continue to do that until we have sufficient resources at the incident to mitigate the entire perimeter. Obviously, Mother Nature's helped us quite a bit. We had moisture. Yesterday evening, we've had increased humidity with reduced winds. My operational folks on the ground have taken advantage of those opportunities that Mother Nature has presented us and worked extremely hard to develop what we have currently and we will continue to progress as long as the conditions remain the same or improve. Obviously, we're still vigilant to what occurred over the last seven days and what type of weather pattern we're in, what kind of what kind of winds we had, what kind of dropping humanities we had, and we'll be watching that closely and we'll be prepared to be proactive. If those conditions resurface during the next week to two weeks, so we can be aggressive with maintaining our perimeter and reduce the risk both to all the communities that are endangered and all the infrastructure that is out there. Thank you. And our final speaker, Cal Fire San Mateo Santa Cruz Unit Chief Orkin. Good morning. It's nice to see we've got a little bit of weather being an advantage, helping us take advantage of those opportunities where we can get people into the fire now and start to actually get some action that is positive as you see the increase with containment is there. I want to just focus a little bit on what Sergeant Zeno said. We have people that are still trying to get in to see if their properties are there. Both San Mateo County and Santa Cruz County are working diligently. They're establishing websites that will be able to provide the public information on the status of their residents. We currently have numerous teams of inspectors out there looking at each of the properties, gathering information so that we can get that out to the public as soon as possible through both the counties so that you can have a idea of what you have left or if your property was undamaged. So please be patient with us as we get this information out to you. We need to make it sure that it's safe for our inspectors to get into the areas so that they can assess the damage that occurred. Thank you. Okay, that concludes the formal speakers. How about I answer any questions that you may have? Yeah, I do know that there were some down strikes across the northern part of the state. I don't believe it was widespread and we didn't have any confirmed in our local area in the San Mateo Santa Cruz unit. Yeah, I don't know the specifics. I don't know if the cell does. Unfortunately, I don't have much specifics other than they entered a restricted area. On the positive note, I consider that they weren't injured, nor were the first responders I got them out. I don't have details right now if they were cited for anything. But this is, you know, if anything, it's mostly reminded everybody to work with us on this. There are a lot of folks who feel like, you know, especially in the beginning they're frustrated that they didn't see more firefighters here, their particular properties. Of course, firefighters will be everywhere, but what do you want to say to the community who's trying to get back in? That just like the chief said, once it is safe to do so and the fire investigators that had a chance to go in there and ream that area, declare that area safe to do so, until then don't. Because there could be a lot of other things going on that people are not aware of. And we understand that they, you know, that's why I mentioned that anything that's important were information wise, we're working to get it out there. Things are changing, but you know, constant every day. So just please work with us. Be patient. We understand how you guys feel, but that's why we have law enforcement out there working together 24-7. Can you talk any more about the gentleman who was found in Davenport? Sure. As I mentioned, the question was about the person who was found deceased up on last chance. So there's no new information. I don't have any new information as far as that's concerned. I mentioned last night that we are working right now to notify that person's next to Ken. And so as soon as we've done that and we've been able to speak with his family, we'll be able to provide more information. What's he in his home? No, he wasn't. And as I mentioned last night, at least preliminarily, it looks like he was maybe near his vehicle and some distance away from his vehicle, likely leaving the fire. Are you guys having enough, Jonathan, enough resources? I know it's a fight for that pie. You guys having enough right now or would you like more? Yeah, so I think the question was related to resources coming into the fire. If you've looked every day, we've increased the number of resources. And that's exactly what we need at the moment. There are over 14,000 firefighters deployed right now across California. Another 26 engines coming from other states. Another 216 National Guard crews come or firefighters coming online in the next few days. So those, you know, those steps are just kind of vital for us to increase that containment. Just remember, any time that this team increases that containment number, that's equivalent to hundreds and hundreds of hours of hard work out on the line. That's what those numbers reflect, essentially. So as we see those firefighting crew numbers come in, as we see the weather become favorable, the correlation of those two together are increasing the percentage. And I will just go back to kind of dovetail on what Sergeant Zuno said, in regard to people going back into the areas trying to check on their structures, it is highly dangerous in there still. There are trees coming down. We have redwood trees, old growth timber that is coming across the roadway, and we have infrastructure that needs repair. We have bridges that have failed, old wooden bridges that have failed that may not appear failed to people that they may drive on. It is not safe. The fire may not be directly impacting their structure or property, but there are huge hazards out there. And the last thing we want to do as first responders is allow somebody to get hurt or injured out there after the fire has gone through. So just need to reiterate that there is going to need to be a lot of patience as we kind of work to secure these areas and get people the information they need. Understand we ourselves know this is personal for us. We have firefighters who've lost homes, and we know how personal it is, and we're working 24 hours a day to get that area secured for them, but it is going to take some time. To follow up on resources, can you confirm that being entire perimeter has been watched at least? So the way the fires work is Chief Brunt and his team divide the fire to geographical areas, branches and divisions, and then there's objectives and tasks within those. So there is a supervisor as well as resources assigned for every geographical area on the fire. Now obviously they move around where necessary for their operational period, but that's one of the big priorities and tasks that these this team comes in and does at a very large scale, and that's their expertise. So yes, Jonathan, is there any help for the San Lorenzo Valley Water District yet? Have they been able to get in there or do you anticipate when they might be able to get in there? Yes, the question is related to San Lorenzo Water District. What we can tell you is there isn't a whole infrastructure branch established as a part of the incident management team now, and that team works directly with the water districts, with the power companies, with the sewer districts to make sure that they're coordinating with fire. There's also the support from the County Emergency Operations Center, the EOC, to make sure that they're getting the information and connections with the fire, because that is the next step after the after the fire is in securing the water systems, ensuring the infrastructure is in place, and that happens sequentially in those conversations and those operations have already begun. So yes, there is integration going on with the water companies. Any idea when they might be able to get up there to make the temporary repairs? Yeah, I'd have to get back to you on that one. I don't want to speak for them. Okay, thanks guys. Everyone up here is available for comments. We will do this again at 6 p.m. Be safe. Thank you.