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BONNY DOON — Every wildfire has its holdouts. The stubborn ones scattered here and there who refuse to leave. The folks who make their last stand to save their property.

But in the Santa Cruz Mountains community of Bonny Doon, just a couple of miles up a wooded winding road from the Pacific Ocean, locals by the dozens are defying orders to evacuate.

With hundreds of Northern California wildfires burning out of control this week and Cal Fire officials lamenting their limited resources, Bonny Doon residents have formed small brigades, loose-knit groups of neighbors and friends who have been staying up all night to save what they can.

There’s no real town here, just a church, a school at the corner of Pine Flat and Ice Cream Grade, and spectacular views. But this is home, a place the Bonny Doon Facebook page calls “a slice of heaven.”

Mike Rockafellow spent much of Thursday checking on holdouts and stomping out fires and then tried returning Friday with fuel for chainsaws. He knew the risk he was taking. There just aren’t enough firefighters, he said. “They need all the help they can get. I tell them, ‘Thank you for everything you’re doing,’ but this is one of those extremely rare situations where there is so much fire in California.”

BONNY DOON, CA – AUGUST 21: Friday morning, Aug., 21, 2020, in Bonny Doon, Calif., by the CZU Complex fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) 

As of Friday afternoon, at least 100 homes and other structures had been destroyed in what’s known as the CZU Complex fire — many of them here in Bonny Doon — but many more could be gone, and hundreds of others are still in danger with spot fires continuing to grow.

Rockafellow and his neighbors have seen what can happen in Paradise and Santa Rosa and Redding, when winds kick up and firestorms overtake entire neighborhoods and towns. But with fire all around them, still they resist the mandatory calls to evacuate.

It’s the last thing that fire crews want. By Friday morning, they had rescued three people in the Santa Cruz Mountains who refused to leave.

“While I understand their desire to protect their homes, they don’t have the training, and we worry they will put themselves in positions they’re not trained for,” Cal Fire spokesman Dan Olson said Friday. “They may not recognize the peril they’re in.”

When fire officials on Thursday evacuated the town of Scotts Valley, a more densely populated community a few miles east with apartment complexes and strip malls and stop lights, 95 percent of the 15,000 residents obediently packed up and left, Mayor Randy Johnson said.

In Bonny Doon, most of the 2,600 residents scattered deep in the redwoods left, too.

Not Kalden Kho, 39, a Tibetan Buddhist who stayed behind and believes he has a higher calling, not just to save his neighbors’ houses but perhaps to save a life.

“I don’t want to leave until everybody leaves,” said Kho, who took a break from 48 hours of fighting fires Friday to connect to cell service at the edge of Highway 1 and let his family know he’s OK. He had been working with a team of 10 locals. “I’m exhausted. I’m so hungry and thirsty and I cannot move.”

BONNY DOON, CA – AUGUST 21: Eric, a Bonny Doon, Calif. native who did not want to give his last name, walks past a tractor on Friday, Aug., 21, 2020, that he’s used to help save his and neighbor’s property form the CZU August Lightning Complex fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) 

Wednesday and Thursday nights were especially terrifying, he said. At one point, he remembers thinking, “There was no wind, but there were no firefighters, either. It’s scary, to be honest.”

Of the locals who fled, a number of them left spray-painted messages for firefighters and holdouts tacked to trees and fences: “House Down Below,” and “Pool, 500 feet!”

Many of those who stayed behind said they had tools to survive, such as generators, water tanks and bulldozers.

Richard Smith has a Jeep Wrangler filled with shovels and rakes. The 56-year-old has lived here nearly all his life. He has been stomping out spot fires all week but sees his mission as the one who calls each neighbor with news about their property.

“This is a very special community,” he said, choking up.

BONNY DOON, CA – AUGUST 21: A sign hangs a promise that may be hard to fulfill at Bonny Doon Union Elementary School, Friday, Aug., 21, 2020, in Bonny Doon, Calif. The town was ordered evacuated due to the CZU August Lightning Complex fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) 

John Solomito, 63, had his own mission to get home Friday: to retrieve his favorite hammer. He wasn’t in town when the fire descended on Bonny Doon earlier this week, so he tried to return Friday but was turned back in his car at a road closure. So he rode his bike 18 miles up steep mountain roads to get here.

“I’m determined,” said the construction contractor. On his surreal ride, choking on dense smoke, his eyes burned as he surveyed ruin after ruin before arriving at his home. The barn was gone and his truck was incinerated, but his house was intact. He opened the garage door and found the hammer.

“It’s like an extension of my arm,” he said.

BONNY DOON, CA – AUGUST 20: A house burns in a residential neighborhood near Empire Grade in Bonny Doon, Calif., in the early Thursday morning on Aug. 20, 2020. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) 

Mugs Hammer put his trust in a boat. If the fire came too close, he figured, he could take the boat out into the pond behind his father’s house and wait out the flames. By Friday morning, he had barely slept in days.

That’s when the house above his exploded into flames, raining embers and ash onto his home and his neighbors’. He frantically raced about digging breaks and dousing fires — and defining the danger of staying behind in Bonny Doon.

“This is my life,” he said. “This is my place. So you stay and fight.

“People run and I get that. Maybe their heart or vision or lungs can’t handle the smoke. It’s probably taking years off my life. But I’m just not that way. I was brought up to fight.”

Staff photographer Dylan Bouscher and writer Ethan Baron contributed to this report.