Homeless Fire Quenched Over Harvey West Park

It took 15 Santa Cruz firefighters 20 minutes to extinguish a wild fire over the baseball fields at Harvey West Park Tuesday night.

The fire, at 8:49 p.m. was 300 yards up the trail near Wagner grove and burned 75 by 50 feet of brush and downed trees. It took a crew of three engines and one truck time to unroll 400 feet of hoselines to reach the blaze.

It was started at a homeless campsite.

Santa Cruz Police have been staging a large effort to clear out illegal campsites. Last week the department arrested Arrests: 20 people, six for felonies; wrote 95 infractions and tagged 11 campsites.

The total for the program is now 175 arrests, 605 citations and 216 campsites posted for abatement and 87 removed.