The Renegades saved homes during CZU. Five years later, emergency responders still call it the wrong move.

The CZU wildfire engulfed the Santa Cruz Mountains five years ago. Yet, even today, Rebecca Stoller will often look out at the towering Douglas fir trees behind her Bonny Doon home, and the canopies will suddenly burst into bright balls of fire, terrifying and beautiful. 

“I know it’s not real, but there’s a lot of trauma there, and a feeling that I didn’t do enough,” Stoller said from her back deck in early September. Then, she shakes herself out of guilt. Without much food or sleep during that week in the summer of 2020, she acknowledges that she didn’t have much more to give while defending her neighborhood from the wildfire. “There are moments when I just cry. It’s still really hard, but it was also a bonding experience with people that you just can’t replicate.” 

To many in Bonny Doon, Stoller, and her friend Paul Gabriel, did more than enough. 

After an Aug. 16 lightning storm sparked a fire in North County and rapidly spread inland, officials ordered evacuations throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains. Yet, firefighting resources were spread thin as much of California was on fire at the same time. Gabriel and Stoller, volunteer firefighters, felt their neighborhood had been left to burn. After watching Gabriel’s house succumb to the flames, the two friends refused to evacuate and decided to protect their community. For days, they felled trees, cut fire breaks, soaked gables and hosed spot fires, saving the homes of Stoller and her neighbors.

Unbeknownst to Stoller and Gabriel at the time, they were just two of an estimated hundreds of Santa Cruz Mountain residents who held a similar belief: if they wanted to save their homes and their neighborhoods, they couldn’t rely on a depleted professional firefighting force. The CZU wildfire burned more than 1,000 structures in Santa Cruz County, an unprecedented level of local fire destruction. People in Bonny Doon believe that without the efforts of those who stayed behind, the wildfire would have taken many more dozens, not over a hundred, more homes.

Today, neighbors refer to these rugged, local folk heroes as The Renegades. Their stories, as varied as North County’s mountain neighborhoods, have been honored with essays, articles, and attempts at documentaries. 

“People left their homes behind but some stayed back to fight,” The Tom Ralston Band sings on its song “Bonny Doon Strong,” inspired by the fires. “They call them The Renegades. The rag-tag renegades. … Fires all around, but they held their ground.” 

For many Renegades, the decision to stay back was less arrogance than careful calculation. Still, the notion of ignoring evacuation orders to defend property during a wildfire, or any natural disaster, remains controversial. Looking back, many Renegades are unsure they would do it again.

Today Deputy Chief James Allen of Cal Fire — the state firefighting agency — readily acknowledges that the Renegades’ efforts saved homes, but he said fire and law officials would never take the position that those who ignore evacuation orders are at all helpful. In fact, he said stories like the Renegades’ can embolden people in the wrong way.

“The challenge is the holistic impact those ‘wins’ have on the overall environment” of getting people to evacuate, Allen said. “If we have a fire that burns through a community and it’s very impactful but there’s no loss of life, I would take that every day over someone perishing in that fire because they maybe decided to stay. Fires can change so quickly.” 

To stay, or to go

Many Renegades say the initial decision to defend their homes against an active wildfire felt instinctual. 

Today, Scott Robinson lives at the edge of the CZU burn scar in Bonny Doon, but at the time he and his family resided in Los Gatos, miles from the blaze. As the fire spread from the North Coast toward his friends’ houses in Bonny Doon, Robinson hardly recalls any internal struggle over whether he would go. 

Robinson, an engineer by trade, pulled on his pair of fireproof coveralls, a hard hat and, to up his professional look, slapped his magnetic company sticker onto his pickup truck and drove off to Bonny Doon. As he approached the police barricade at the edge of the evacuation area, he told officers that he had to “go check on a generator” at a fire station on Felton Empire Road. He said he gained instant access. 

“I’ve never done anything like that in my life, I didn’t even really think about it,” Robinson said. 

An eerie feeling crept in as Robinson neared his friends’ neighborhood. Propane tanks whizzed, smoke filled the air, and he saw people running around with chainsaws to drop trees and clear the space around homes. 

“It was the first time I had been in a situation with that much fire and that much uncertainty,” Robinson said. Then, through the haze, Robinson’s friend, Rod, appeared. A professional firefighter who stayed back to defend his neighborhood, Rod seemed incongruously calm. “He told me the fire was not going to get us, or get his property, which was pretty well-cleared,” Robinson said. “So I just stayed because he was going to be there.” 

A mile away, Eric Pucelik was in the Pineridge neighborhood, where the fire had crept up the canyon and began consuming homes. 

“We were trying to save as much as we could, dropping trees, watering people’s generators, putting sprinklers on roofs, just whatever we could do,” Pucelik said. “It was like problem-solving at the fastest pace possible without any repercussions. I could go anywhere, go into anybody’s house, jump anyone’s fence, it was just like full-on no rules, save everything you can. And that s–t was pretty exciting.” 

Robinson and Pucelik say one factor played critical in their decision to stay. Each of their Renegade crews included people with professional firefighting experience. For Stoller and Gabriel, their years as volunteer firefighters, and familiarity with the terrain, helped them to actively read the wildfire’s movements. They all say the fire spread rapidly at the start, but the wind eventually died down as the wildfire moved inland, transforming it into something more manageable. 

A complicated success 

Allen, the chief deputy of Cal Fire’s CZU unit, said the Renegades ultimately got lucky with the weather. A sudden shift in the wind could have turned their heroism into catastrophe. 

“The thought of someone that they’re going to stay and save their house still happens on occasion, but it’s kind of like when you hear that someone got into a car accident and was somehow saved by not wearing a seatbelt,” Allen said. “Maybe you get lucky in some of those situations but the risk is so high.” 

Early evacuations, he said, are critical to ensuring everyone gets out in a safe and orderly way, especially in steep terrain like Bonny Doon. For those to be successful, Allen said Cal Fire has to actively push back against stories like the Renegades’.

“We need to continue to message why staying back is the wrong move,” Allen said. “Even when we have a fire burn more gradually, having people stay behind might end up in a hazardous environment with no support.” 

Earlier this month, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark sat in a meeting with Allen about natural disasters response. Part of that conversation was how to deal with people who ignore evacuation orders. Clark said decisions like those of the Renegades impede emergency response, and can increase the risk of death in a disaster. During CZU, Clark said some Cal Fire helicopters avoided dumping water onto certain areas because they were concerned about injuring people who stayed back. 

Clark said only a fraction of people ignore evacuation orders in a natural disaster, and negotiating their leave can be difficult. He said he “can totally understand” someone who believes they made the right call to stay back during CZU. 

“And what I say to that is, maybe this time you came out on top, but you don’t know about next time,” Clark said. “The outcome for those folks could have been disastrously different.” 

Many of the Renegades acknowledge this reality. In an essay for Outside Magazine immediately after CZU, Bonny Doon resident and well-known Renegade Justin Robinson said luck played a major role in his crew’s ability to save 25 homes during the wildfire. 

“I would never encourage others to do what I did,” Robinson wrote. “It was so circumstantial” that the fire eventually slowed down and became easier to contain. 

Pucelik and Robinson both said, under the same circumstances, they would stay and defend their homes again. 

“Unless it’s a howling wind and I’m in a spot that’s so overgrown that there’s a good chance you’ll die, then that’s the only one I’m not staying for,” Pucelik said. “In every other type of situation, I’m going to do something.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.