Six Years After the CZU Fire

Every morning I look out over the town from our deck, and the fire is still there. Six years of regrowth has softened the ridgelines across the valley, but the old burned trees still stand against the green, gray snags marking where the CZU Lightning Complex came through in August 2020. The lightning came first, a rare dry storm that set fires which merged. CAL FIRE puts the complex at 86,509 acres across the Santa Cruz and San Mateo mountains, 1,490 structures destroyed and 140 damaged, one civilian killed and one injured, contained on 22 September 2020 after 37 days. Boulder Creek, Bonny Doon, and the rest of the San Lorenzo Valley were hit hardest, and it all happened in the middle of the pandemic. Our home was spared, and so were our immediate neighbors. Recovery, from this deck, looks like a mountain healing in patches.

The fire forced mass evacuations across the valley and moved fast through steep, forested terrain. When people were allowed home, whole neighborhoods were gone. For the fuller account, see our history of Boulder Creek's notable disasters.

That patchiness describes the whole valley. Six years on, some households are fully rebuilt and others are still living the fire every day. Across the County's CZU recovery area, excluding garage permits, the Recovery Permit Center dashboard showed 179 completed dwelling units and 104 active dwelling-unit permits on September 4, 2026: 83 at Issued and 21 at Applied, Routing, or Resubmittal. The completed count includes single-family, manufactured, and accessory dwelling units. These are permit and status counts, not occupied-household counts, and they do not say how many families have moved home. The June 2024 grand-jury finding below remains historical context rather than the current count.

What's come back

Drive the valley now and the recovery shows up in pieces. Rebuilt homes stand on lots that were bare foundations a few years ago. The forest, which many feared was lost, has come back further than expected: coast redwoods that looked dead have pushed new growth from scorched trunks, and green has returned to hillsides that were black. Redwoods are built for this. Most of the ancient giants at Big Basin survived even where the fire burned hottest. Ninety-seven percent of the park's 18,000 acres burned in the fire's first three days, yet a small ranger team evacuated the campgrounds ahead of it and no one in the park was lost. The story of that evacuation deserves its own telling, and Traci Bliss sets the account down in her history of the park, Big Basin Redwood Forest: California's Oldest State Park (The History Press, 2021).

The institutions are moving too. Big Basin, which lost nearly all of its buildings, reopened for limited day use and has an approved plan to rebuild. The town's businesses, fire department, and community groups are all still here.

What hasn't

Recovery has been uneven. Some families rebuilt within a couple of years; others are still not home. The obstacles have been the ones you'd expect, and some you wouldn't:

• Underinsurance that left people short of what rebuilding actually costs.
• A slow permitting and geologic-review process that has been, at times, contentious.
• The sheer exhaustion of navigating agencies and paperwork for years.

County officials have themselves acknowledged flaws in the rebuilding system. The county's own civil grand jury reported in June 2024, four years on, that "only about one third of the homes that were destroyed are being rebuilt", and note the tense: being rebuilt, not finished. It named three causes. People were "under-insured to the degree that they simply could not bear the cost to rebuild". Others were "unable to navigate a lengthy and often bewildering permitting process". And others did not rebuild simply because nobody had told them help existed.

That last one has a number attached. The Long Term Recovery Group has been supplying septic upgrades, water tanks, contractors, bridge funding and, with Mennonite Disaster Services, four to five rebuilt homes a year for families with no insurance or nowhere near enough. A survey of fire victims found more than half had never heard of it. It had no website until March 2024.

The hardest part is the neighbors who never got the chance. Around the valley there are still families who haven't been able to rebuild, and others selling their properties as-is because they can't afford to, with the county's permitting and septic requirements adding costs that insurance never anticipated.

The volunteers who stayed

While the rest of us evacuated, Boulder Creek's volunteer firefighters stayed behind in a town with no power, no cell service, and at first, not much food, protecting homes as the fire front moved through and state resources stretched across hundreds of fires burning at once. Help found them as the days went on: donated food and water rolled in, and volunteers from other departments came up the hill to stand with them. Long after the town reopened and residents were let back in, they were still mopping up and containing spot fires. It was a long run. They saved the town and many of our homes, and along the way they fed the animals they found left behind.

What endures

What has lasted is the mutual aid that showed up when official help was slow. It's neighbors who grew close because they went through the same thing. It's a hard-won, practical respect for fire preparedness that shapes how people clear defensible space and pack a go-bag now. Six years on, the valley is still rebuilding, and still here. If you have a story from those years, or one about coming back, we'd like to hear it.

I evacuated that August with a car full of animals and came home a month later to a town that held. My partner was one of the volunteers who stayed. Six years later, the department's summer BBQ still fills the fire station, the ridge across from my deck gets a little greener every year, and some of my neighbors are still waiting. All three of those things are true at once. That's what recovery looks like here.

Frequently asked questions

When was the CZU fire?

The CZU Lightning Complex fire started in mid-August 2020 during a dry lightning storm and burned for weeks before containment that September.

How much did the CZU fire burn?

It burned 86,509 acres across the Santa Cruz and San Mateo mountains, destroyed 1,490 structures and damaged 140 more, and killed one civilian and injured another. Those figures cover both counties; inside Big Basin itself, Traci Bliss records that no member of staff, visitor or resident was killed or injured, and that the residents' pets came out too. Counting Santa Cruz County alone, the county grand jury puts the loss at nearly 1,000 structures, of which 697 were single-family homes. For anyone reading this from the valley, 697 is the figure that means something. Boulder Creek and the San Lorenzo Valley were among the hardest-hit areas.

Has Boulder Creek recovered from the CZU fire?

Partly. Many homes have been rebuilt and the forest has regrown strongly, but recovery has been uneven, and some families are still working to rebuild six years later, slowed by insurance gaps and a difficult permitting process.

What about Big Basin?

Big Basin lost nearly all its buildings but most of its old-growth redwoods survived. It's open for limited day use, and State Parks approved a rebuilding plan in July 2026.

Have a CZU story, a rebuild update, or a correction? Share it with us. If you're preparing for fire season now, see our wildfire evacuation guide. In an emergency, call 911.

Sources

• CAL FIRE, CZU Lightning Complex incident record
• Santa Cruz County Grand Jury, Victims of the CZU Wildfire: Four Years Later, 21 June 2024
• Traci Bliss, Big Basin Redwood Forest: California's Oldest State Park (The History Press, 2021), ebook pages 190 and 193.

Links checked 4 September 2026.