Was on fire. Reporter thats andy immel standing in the photo surrounded by whats left of the home he built over 42 years. H nifds gandline. Nd tdher, j s big cry. Before that it was we dont know, maybe. We kept hope. Reporter but on that morning that the immels were still hoping, this is what was happening in their neighborhood and all over boulder creek. By morning it was all rubble. The bits and pieces that make a home completely charred. This street, fallen leaf drive, completely devastated. Still there were streets that prove just how unfair a fire can be. Her burned to eground. That just goes to show that we dont have the resources on it that we would normally. If this were a normal situation where, say, this were only one or two fires within the state, we would have more resources here. Reporter cal fire crews stretched thin, dealing with this kind of work. Spot fires that are smoldering slight change in weather conditions. You dont really grasp what it really means to be in that situation till youre in it. So here we are. Were kind of like whoa, now we get what all these other people have been going through everywhere else all these years. We just want to pass our blessings and hopes to so many other families up here. Still in our neighborhood area. Reporter kris reyes for abc 7 news. And lets take you live now to an update from cal fire happening in santa cruz in scotts valley. The czu fire burning there is now at 57,000 acres. Thats a new number they just gave us. 2 contained. Lets listen in. Little bit of help from Mother Nature as far as a little bit cooling temperatures, little change in the wind. We have not seen erratic fire behavior throughout the day. Its allowed us to make some progress. Albeit somewhat small due to our lack of resources. But we have seen little progress as far as being able to start to construct some contingency lines, especially in the southern end of the fire thats in progress as we speak. So its giving us a Good Opportunity to get in there and take care of that. We still are doing a lot of point protection on structures throughout the entire fire which has allowed us because the intensity has dropped slightly for the crews to get in there and get some good work done. Fires still making progress in burning down throughout the san lorenzo valley into the highway 9 corridor. And on the western end of the fire and the northern end of the fire the fire is being mitigated slightly by the onshore marine flow. The fog layers and so forth. So thats allowing us to get in there where we can do some work, especially behind the community of davenport to provide a layer of protection for that community. Were looking to see whats going to happen tonight. The weather should be more favorable. We should not have as heavy of the north winds that weve been experiencing. Our expectation is the fire behavior should mitigate slightly, only slightly. But we will continue to make progress where we can, take advantage of those opportunities where we can, and make some progress. With the coming weather the next few days we can do some pretty good work. Beyond that its going to provide us some challenges and were preparing to meet those challenges with the weather as the coming days approach. Speaking next from the Santa Cruz CountySheriffs Office is deputy chief clark. Good evening. So i thought id touch on a little of what we did today. We completed the evacuations of the city of scotts valley, about 12,000 residents. We completed that about midafternoon. The next thing i want to talk about is really reiterating, and weve said this at prior press conferences, please do not return back into the evacuated zone if you dont have to. It presents hazards for everybody thats trying to work in that area. I can totally understand if you have medication, if you feel like you have to go back, but please try to seek alternative means to obtain that stuff. Contact your doctor. If theres an alternate route you can go obtaining critical things you need that would be extremely helpful just based on the dynamic and changing nature of the fire and really allowing fire personnel to devote everything they can to helping put out this fire. In terms of burglary suppression, today we had about 60 personnel looking for potential looters and protecting property. I can say that there are people out there unfortunately that are looking to victimize people who have left and have been displaced. And its terrible. Its disgusting. Today alone we arrested five people. Five people with two carloads full of stolen property off of fall creek road. And so theres more information on that. Our press Information Officer has posted information about those folks. On our Facebook Page. So you can go to the santa cruz Sheriffs OfficeFacebook Page to obtain more information with regards to those arrests. But in touching on that some of us have ring cameras, web cams, that sort of thing around our houses. If you see like somebody prowling around your house, call our dispatch center at 8314711121. 8314711121. And report the problem. Well get an officer there. Like i said, today we had 60 personnel. Were going to continue with likely that strength of people for as long as people are displaced. So were going to have people in the area looking for these folks. But if you see something please call. In terms of large Animal Rescue i wanted to provide some information as far asconcerned. If you have the large animals that need to be evacuated im going to provide a number. This is to our large Animal Rescue folks that will help get those animals out. 8313316227. 8313316227. Thats for large animal evacuation. I want to touch on missing persons. This is going to come up. Its obviously something that we encourage. If you havent heard from your loved one, please call us. And like i said yesterday, you can go to the red cross website to look to see whether or not theyve been reported there. If you cant find them there, call our dispatch and well look into it. To provide you some numbers, weve taken about 19 missing persons cases since this fire started. 19. We have detectives that have looked into it. We brought that number down to two. There are two missing persons cases at this point that were t theres a resolution to both of those. And lastly i just want to touch on there was another Evacuation Center can that was opened at simpkins swim center. Thats open today. You can go there if youve been displaced and need a place to go. But also id encourage you to contact the shelter hotline at 8662722237 to be connected with shelter services. Thank you. Speaking next from the San Mateo CountySheriffs Office is detective blankswade. Good evening. Right now we too are in safety and security mode. We have teams of people including Law Enforcement and volunteers who are in the area providing those safety and security measures for the northern part of this fire, the areas that reach into San Mateo County. We want to say thank you to everybody who has evacuated so far. And those that are doing so right now. Were still seeing a lot of people entering the area for whatever reason and we want to reiterate that these are hard closures. We have Law Enforcement personnel who are staffed at these closures and were not allowing anybody back in for safety and security reasons. We stress this because we want to make sure that youre not putting any of our First Responders in a situation where they have to risk their lives to rescue you. I know that everybody wants updates as far as whats going on at their house and whats going on at their neighbors street and their friends property. We cant give you those numbers right now. Right now were trying to assess the needs of the community. And its a really great opportunity for us to show our strength as a community. By listening to our fire experts and cooperating with these orders and showing that you can be patient and wait for this information as many of the other fire experts have said, this is going to be a long haul. We would like your patience in that. So thank you very much. And again, your cooperation and patience is much appreciated. Speaking next, one of the unified incident commanders from Cal Fire Incident Management Team 3, chief see. Good evening. This morning i talked about trying to obtain some small wins. Obviously we did today. Weve got 2 containment on this fire. I know its not much. But its a small win. Lots of small wins equal a big win at the end of the day. Today was a good day for us. Weve had smoke conditions that have kept the fire in check with increased amenities and reduced winds. Well see what comes overnight. Tonight were anticipating at the upper elevations that the humidity will drop again on the high ridgetops. But down in the lower levels the humidity will stay increased. So it will moderate the fire behavior in those areas. With that said, the firefighters are have been working extremely hard for many, many hours over the last several days. And theyre going to continue to do so. This campus increased in size by 100 personnel today and a few resources have come in. Over the course of the next week or so were going to continue to see that small trickle effect coming in as we see how the state resources deployed here in california to assist us. Right now weve got 13 Incident Management Teams deployed on two dozen different large fires in the state of california. This emergency system is strapped. But please be aware everyones doing the best they can for the citizens of california. Thank you. And our final speaker, the unit chief for cal fire in the local san mateo, santa cruz unit, chief larkin. So were entering into day 6 of this and as we keep saying this is going to be a long haul. Our firefighters are out there doing the absolute best they can with the limited resources that we have to protect the citizens of Santa Cruz County and San Mateo County. As we reiterate each time there are still a lot of citizens that have chosen to stay in the community. And i had firsthand eyewitness to a lot of those people driving around the fire area when i went out to do just a little bit of windshield surveying of myself of the devastation that is occurring. Its very difficult to maneuver around this fire as it is with the narrow roads and add that public back in there is very difficult and very unsafe for our firefighters. If youre in the area and you dont need to be there, please leave, let us do our job so its the safest environment we can provide for our firefighters. This is going to be the long haul as i keep saying. Were day 6 of this fire and weve only gotten it 6 kabted. So bear with us. Were doing the best we can with the resources we have. And as resources come in the teams going to allocate those resources equally to the assignments that need to be completed. So thank you. As usual, were happy to answer any questions. I just ask you group them together were listening to an update from cal fire and county and regional officials there at scotts valley. The command center in the santa cruz mountains. For the fire the czu fire that has continued to grow. And they did talk about favorable conditions today. Higher humidity, lower wind that helped them have a very good day as someone described but hair still very concerned about the days my psoriasis. Cosentyx works on all of this. Cosentyx treats the multiple symptoms of Psoriatic Arthritis to help you look and feel better. Dont use if youre allergic to cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections syand lowered ability to fight them may occu if your inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen, or if youve had a vaccine or plan to. Serious allergic reactions may occur. Watch me learn more at cosentyx. Com. Rewarded get a free delivery perk when you order. [group] grubhub. In the north bay a team of San Francisco firefighters is on the way to battle series of fires burning across five counties. The lnu lightning complex of fires has burned at least 219,000 acres. You can see on this map where those individual fires are burning. Right now theyre 7 contained. Abc 7 News ReporterLaura Anthony joinss u iv county with more. Laura . Reporter hi, ama. Were actually in rural napa county today on the other side to the west of vacaville. This i the same hennessy fire. It goes for miles, and the devastation is everywhere you look. This couple told me they spent about four years building up this property, remodeling. They fought these fires. There were three they said coming from three Different Directions for four days, and finally they had to give up. I mean, im trying to look at the bright side. If you see over on that side, thats actually where we got mayor quid two years ago almost to this date. Reporter its all about appreciating what survived rather than what was lost for this napa county couple. For instance, their wedding altar stillanng. Thraiouse and a were totally destroyed. But a small guest cottage somehow survived, the flames coming just a few feet from the back deck. For four days they tried to defend their rural property. But finally on wednesday night the roaring hennessy fire was too much and moving way too fast. We kind of defended three fires approaching. But the third one on wednesday evening was like it was brutal. Weve gained a family for sure through this event. Were all kind of spread out but they just came i have no words. Reporter just five miles up the road three people did not survive. Found dead on a property surrounded by scars from what was clearly a fastmoving inferno that left no signs of life in its it may not look like it now, but they know they got lucky. Were hopeful. Its going to be a long path but were waiting for that day we get to celebrate with everyone again. For version 2. 0 of our dream y idea of the intensity of this fire at its height when we drove up the road, unlike what you see in this area where you see the trees, the shrubs are singed but theyre Still Standing or theyre burned, the branches are burned, as you get farther up the road closer to where those three people died you can see that it went through there as a fire storm. There is nothing left up there. It is a moonscape. You can see where there were trees. Now there are just dots in the hillside. Obviously it was a very intense, very hot, very fastmoving fire. Live in napa county Laura Anthony, abc 7 news. Laura, thank you very much. And as we heard firefighters say a few minutes ago in that live news conference, ama, they had a little bit of a break from the weather today. Yes. But they are of course concerned about whats tmeet get 7 abc ne meteorologist sandhya patel with the latest on that. Sandhya. Yeah. And dan and ama, what the concern is is the potential for dry lightning this weekend. Let me show you the Current Conditions near the fire lines in the north bay. Temperatures in the warm category, upper 80s to low 90s. Humidity has been actually creeping up. Upper 30s to low 40s. But the winds are beginning to pick up as well. Gusting out of the north to 15 miles an hour near the hennessy fire. The good thing is like the humidity did come up because of the fog last night which allowed them to make some progress. In the czu fire area 72 degrees h tot now, wind gusts out of the n tl you this much. That humidity continues to rise, which should help the firefighters during the overnight hours. This is going to be the problem, though. Winds right now gusting to 41 in San Francisco. At least for the next few hours its going to be touch and go for the crews on the fire lines. Mount tam cam showing you a combination of smoke and some of the higher clouds up above. Air quality is suffering because of the smoke in the wildfire areas and even the surrounding areas. Poor air quality around santa cruz area, we are seeing some unhealthy air quality around walnut creek, concord, livermore area as you will notice, and in the north bay good for santa rosa but not so good in fairfield and vacaville. Emeryville camera showing you a horrible view as we look toward the port of oakland. Thats why a spare the ash alert is in effect for the next two days. Poor to unhealthy air quality will continue to impact us. Live doppler 7 showing you the fog near the coast. Thats whats going ohelp the humidity overnight tonight. Temperatures right now anywhere from the 60s to the 90s. It was hot inland today. But comfortable at the coast. And a smoky sky from our santa cruz camera right now. You can see how bad it is. Smoke and haze through the week. Mild with fog at the coast. Hot inland the next two days. And there is a chance of thunder between sunday night and tuesday, which could prove problematic. Which is why a fire weather watch goes up sunday morning through tuesday. Concern is erratic gusty winds, 40 to 65 miles an hour, dry thunderstorms, and that means lightning could spark fires if it develops. Its remnants of former hurricane genevieve that well be watching. Temperatures tomorrow morning mid 50s to the low 70s. Hazy smoky skies to start off the day and that continues into the afternoon. Mid 60s along the coast with lingering fog. Breezy conditions. Youll also see high clouds filtering the sun inland areas. The hot spots will be in the upper 90s. But nothing like the heat wave that we experienced over the past week. Heres the leftovers of genevieve coming into our area. Lor some showers and esday thunderstorms, mainly thunderstorms with dry lightning. The smoke will continue to impact us through the weekend. The vielet purple kath tindicate heavier smoke. So tomorrow be prepared for some very bad air quality again tomorrow afternoon and into the evening. The accuweather sevenday forecast smoky, hazy conditions mid 60s up toer 90s both days. Spare the air alert. Sunday night through tuesday. Dont be too alarmed by all the thunderstorm icons here. Its just to really give you a headsup to be aware, be alert because if any thunderstorms do develop between sunday night and tuesday that could be a big problem for all of us, not just the firefighters. Something to definitely watch out for. Dan and ama . All right, sandh