A drive down Palo Colorado road starts out still lush and green. The road shaded by towering trees. About three miles in, firefighters are mopping up a hillside.
“So here we’re doing combination of spraying water and using tools to dig around to look for unburned material that might be below the surface,” says Captain Erich Mesenburg of the Novato Fire District.
Mesenburg one of more than 5000 personnel who have come in to help on the Soberanes Fire. His crew is also removing any vegetation to make sure the fire doesn’t go beyond this point.
Keith Bispo lives by the hillside. When his wife, kids and pets evacuated, he stayed back to protect his house and help his neighbors.
“I started digging a fire line myself thinking okay.. and I barely got even started and these guys showed up,” says Bispo.
A bulldozer created a line to stop the fire from reaching these homes. And as the fire came toward Bispo's house, crews started their own controlled burn to fight fire with fire.
“Started their own fire from the top and just controlled it as it burned all the way down. And then back fired and back fired and burned it out. These guys are awesome they did a great job,” says Bispo.
He has lived out here for 35 years. He’s seen five wildfires, but none ever came this close.
“We didn’t even come close to losing our houses, I don’t feel, relatively. It’s close, but man not with these other guys with fire raging up to their house,” says Bispo.
While he can breathe a sigh of relief, he knows some of his neighbors weren’t so lucky.
On a drive further down the road with officials from CalFire and the U.S. Forest Service. Hillsides become covered with ash, powerlines are down and tree trunks burnt black. The group gets quiet as we come upon a destroyed home.
It’s off of Rocky Creek Road. The home is burned to the foundation. There’s a car still in the driveway, a coffee sitting on the hood.
Tom Stokesberry with the U.S. Forest Service says this area is where many of the 57 destroyed homes are located. “Residents have not been up in here, except for the ones that chose to stay. Everyone is accounted for,” says Stokesberry.
As the fire moves to the south and the east it’s going deeper into the wilderness, but 2000 structures remain threatened.