Bay Area residents seeking to drive to Southern California along an iconic highway that passes through Big Sur were finally able to do so again Saturday, the latest sign that things are getting back to normal even as a major wildfire burns.
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Caltrans opened the 10-mile stretch of state Highway 1 at 1 p.m. It had been closed from just south of Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn on the north, and at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park on the south end since Wednesday. Before that, an even longer stretch of the highway had been closed as crews fought the blaze.
The opening marked the first time Highway 1 has been fully open from the Bay Area through Big Sur since Aug. 11, three days after the Timber Fire began.
The fire was 29% contained on Saturday afternoon, according to a Cal Fire statement issued just after 3 p.m. It has burned 7,591 acres in Monterey County and continues to burn northeast toward the Los Padres National Forest and away from populated areas.
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Hotels and restaurants began to reopen Thursday and Friday, and more did so Saturday. July and August are the biggest tourism months in the area, and at least one restaurant estimated that it was losing $70,000 per day before it re-opened Thursday.
Fire crews were fighting the blaze in smaller numbers because the threat to homes and people have been mitigated. Not a single structure has burned, and not a single injury reported even though the blaze is the third-largest in California this year.
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