July 7, 2008, about 7:30 pm
At this evening's Fire Information Meeting at the Red Cross Evacuation Center, Carmel Middle School, Incident Commander Mike Dietrich, Big Sur Fire Brigade Chief Frank Penny and Monterey County Sheriff Mike Kanalakis announced that residents of Big Sur north of Pfeiffer State Park may return to their homes, beginning at 10:00 am tomorrow morning.
South of Pfeiffer is still under mandatory evacuation all the way to Lucia.
But Big Sur Fire and the Sheriff's Department will work with those who may need to get into the Partington Ridge area, on a case by case basis.
In addition to this news, the Unified Command issued a map with "visual aids" showing the predicted wind conditions for the next few days (the Red Arrow, pointing away from Jamesburg and Cachagua).
"Smiley faces" are in the areas in which the fire suppression efforts have made those areas reasonably secure.
The Unified Commanders stressed two things:
1) The downgrade of the evacuation order from mandatory to advisory in the Big Sur area on both sides of Highway 1 is a "return" authorization, rather than a "re-entry" declaration.
The term "re-entry" implies much more in the way of restored infrastructure, utilities, etc; but, the bottom line is that starting at 10:00 am tomorrow morning, people who live and work north of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in Big Sur, can begin to return to their residences.
2) If the weather changes, everything could change. At the moment, the fire is still only 18% contained. We have a long way to go yet, and we're not off scot-free.
The audio from this meeting will be available on KUSP's website as soon as possible.
We do have a few small reasons to celebrate!
Cheers, Central Coast!
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