In the largest closure of recreation lands in the region’s history, fire activity has shut down nearly 200 parks, open space preserves and watersheds in the Greater Bay Area.
Park managers attributed the closures to smoke, red flag warnings, fires and firefighter activity.
Closures include 100% shutdowns of Point Reyes National Seashore, watersheds in Marin Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and all San Mateo County Parks. These closures join more than 65 parks in the East Bay Regional Park District, and a connected network of state and county parks, and open space preserves on the South Peninsula and in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
“All parks are closed until further notice as park rangers are assigned to support the CZU Lightning Complex fire fighting efforts,” San Mateo County Parks Director Nicholas Calderon wrote on the department’s website.
Of 350-plus recreation sites in the Greater Bay Area, only about 150 are open. Most of them are near the shorelines of the bay, delta or ocean, including the San Francisco and Marin headlands in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Their status and locations are listed in red and green, for closed and open, respectively, on The Chronicle’s Outdoor Tracker interactive map at www.SFChronicle.com.
On Sunday afternoon, wind aroused the Woodward Fire at Point Reyes National Seashore, where the entire 71,000-acre park, with access points at Sir Francis Drake near Inverness, Five Brooks along Highway 1 and Palomarin north of Bolinas, was closed.
At the Dixon Fire Lookout on Barnabe Peak in Samuel P. Taylor State Park, Michael Pechner, a volunteer firefighter and meteorologist, watched the Woodward Fire explode on Inverness Ridge in the park.
“Until midafternoon Sunday, all I could see was smoke with quarter-mile visibility,” Pechner said. “Then the Woodward Fire blew up. It’s burning in the canyons of both sides of Inverness Ridge and near Limantour Road. The big 747 is doing most of the (fire retardant) drops, but they can’t dive down and maneuver into the small canyons.”
The Woodward Fire is in the vicinity of where the Vision Fire burned in October 1995, when 12,353 acres were scorched in a wildfire started by an illegal campfire.
Other major closures of recreation sites this week include the entire watershed lands and lakes of the Marin Municipal Water District, East Bay Municipal Utility District and Contra Costa Water District. They include Los Vaqueros, San Pablo and Del Valle reservoirs in the East Bay hills, the top recreation lakes in the Bay Area.
Fires are not burning in all of the parks. At East Bay Parks, for instance, all but seven of the 73 parks were closed last week, with fires burning at six: Del Valle, Mission Peak, Morgan Territory, Round Valley, Pleasanton Ridge and Sunol Regional Wilderness.
Across the region, parks were being be closed from smoke, dangerous fire conditions or fire activity. At Half Moon Bay State Beach, for instance, the campground was closed so firefighters could use it as a staging area, according to a ranger.
Some of the Greater Bay Area’s largest recreation lands have been shut down.
In the South Bay, the largest state park in Northern California, Henry W. Coe State Park at 87,000 acres and with access points out of Morgan Hill, was shut down. In the East Bay, Mount Diablo State Park and its four entry points was closed last week.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, a connected matrix of a dozen parks and preserves that span from Skyline to the sea were closed. At the most famous, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the 78,000-acre CZU Lightning Complex Fire devoured the ranger station, visitor center, museum and amphitheater.
Tom Stienstra is The Chronicle’s outdoors writer. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @StienstraTom
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Fires trigger historic shut down of greater Bay Area parks, with up to 200 closures - San Francisco Chronicle
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