After coming home from work Tuesday, I returned a call to a friend from Maine who heard about the Lockheed Fire and wanted to make sure we were OK. As soon as I hang up after telling her we're in the clear and the fire is almost contained, sirens come wailing down the street.... and they kept coming and coming. We went online to firedispatch.com to see what was happening. Turns out the Brookdale Lodge & Inn, just a few miles up Highway 9 from us, was ablaze. Initially, they said it was a gas leak. It quickly turned into a 3 alarm fire. Flames were shooting up 75 feet into the trees. We heard trucks and sirens come up the valley for a solid hour. Since there were so many fire crews in the area from the other fire, they were able to give it a full assault and got it out quickly. They even had 3 aircraft come and drop water and chemical retardant on the surrounding wildland. We're lucky that this happend when there were so many firefighters in the area, or it could have gotten a lot worse fast. Here's a link to the full story http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_13156098?IADID=Search-www.santacruzsentinel.com-www.santacruzsentinel.com
