It took an army of eight helicopters, six air tankers, 18
bulldozers, 15 water tenders, dozens of fire engines and nearly
2,000 firefighters from around the state to extinguish last
September’s Croy Fire that roared relentlessly through the Santa
Cruz Mountains northwest of Gilroy.
GILROY – It took an army of eight helicopters, six air tankers, 18 bulldozers, 15 water tenders, dozens of fire engines and nearly 2,000 firefighters from around the state to extinguish last September’s Croy Fire that roared relentlessly through the Santa Cruz Mountains northwest of Gilroy.
The final price tag for the battle between Mother Nature and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection was nearly $9 million, according to recent data released by the CDF.
The figure includes money reimbursed to local city and county firefighters for overtime accumulated while fighting the blaze with the CDF, and fees paid to the city of Gilroy to rent Christmas Hill Park for base camp during the week-long affair.
On top of that, $3.5 million in property damage was inflicted by the blaze to 100 homes and buildings in the heavily vegetated hills, and 34 homes were destroyed, according to the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Services. The figure may seem low considering the number of homes destroyed by the fire, but since “a large majority” of units were trailers and mobile homes, the replacement value is unusually low, said Terry Gitlin, director of the OES.
“There were a lot of unpermitted and uninsured homes in the area,” said CDF spokesperson Chris Morgan. “Combine that with the quick-moving nature of this blaze, and we knew right away this was going to be costly.”
When the first CDF air support flew over the fire 20 minutes after it was first reported at 1:50 p.m. on Sept. 23, pilots estimated the inferno’s size at 10 acres, with numerous structures in the 7900 block of Croy Road already ablaze. Less than two hours later, the fire had reached 120 acres – by dawn the next morning the total acres burned would rise to 1,000, and eventually expand to 3,127 acres before being officially controlled six days later, according to the CDF.
Roughly 300 homes were threatened and 200 evacuated throughout several neighborhoods in southern Santa Clara County’s western hills during the fire.
A more detailed damage assessment by the OES breaks down the 100 structures burned by the fire: 18 houses and mobile homes destroyed, 52 saved; 14 residential trailers destroyed, six saved; one school bus acting as a home and one “agricultural outbuilding” acting as a home were also destroyed, two similar homes were saved; one house suffered major damage, two minor damage and one minimal damage; three commercial buildings were damaged; and 71 vehicles were destroyed.
A “save” means fire burned within 100 feet of a structure, Gitlin said. Approximately $200,000 was the average assessment of the homes in the area, although they ranged from $500 to almost $1 million.
“Homeowners wanting to rebuild were given the option to apply for help through federal Small Business Loans,” Gitlin said. “But due to federal laws we have no way to check how much has been loaned so far.”
Representatives from the U.S. Small Business Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resource Conservation Service, American Red Cross, CDF and Santa Clara Valley Water District met with victims of the Croy Fire in early October to discuss the resources available to help them rebuild.
