On Saving Everything: #CruzStrong

Photo Credit: Sara Gobets

While most of us evacuated to safety, several families stayed to protect their properties in Bonny Doon. These were not your average property owners. They were part of the fire volunteers, part mountain bikers, and a huge part #CruzStrong #BonnyDoonStrong. This story is from the San Francisco Chronicle. And this is their story as told by Megan Cassady:

As a branch of the CZU Lightning Complex fires closed in on Bonny Doon’s lush homesteader ranches, and families fled south to Santa Cruz on Thursday night, John Lingemann planted himself a top a knoll and watched. Lingemann, a neighbor would later say, he had been waiting for this fire for 77 years. Propane tanks about a mile and a half away started exploding around 11 PM, sending 50 foot daggers of flame into the sky. By the time the CZU lightning complex crested the ridge toward Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz mountains, the heat was devouring trees at an alarming rate. But then something peculiar happened. While the flames were voracious higher, the fire’s pathway down the hill side slowed to a trudge.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Lingemann said, and he began to formulate a plan.