SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Encampment sweeps are continuing throughout San Francisco, but in many streets, the tents are back.

Less than 24 hours after city workers moved homeless individuals from 19th and Folsom, we found several people on the same sidewalk with tents.

We caught up with Ramon Castillo. When we met him on Tuesday, he said he was going to move his tent to another street. On Wednesday, he said he didn’t get to move it at all.

“They took my stuff,” said Castillo and added, “They towed it away. They took it.”

San Francisco intensifies homeless encampment sweeps: ‘It’s time for us to do something’

We learned Ramon was arrested and cited for illegal lodging after we left on Tuesday. He mentioned feeling frustrated but was trying to stay positive.

“I’ll be okay. It happened to me too many times. This one is a different thing,” said Castillo.

During the resolution, San Francisco’s Public Works and members of the Department of Emergency Management offered Ramon a hotel room. He declined then, but he had a change of heart.

“Right now, I hope they give me a hotel,” said Ramon.

We made a call to our city contact. They asked for Ramon to meet them at their next location. We looked it up on the map and showed Ramon. He said he would be there at 1 p.m.

VIDEO: As cities begin clearing homeless encampments, service providers prepare for potential influx

We interviewed the city’s Healthy Streets Operation Center Manager on their approach.

“Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the 9th circuit vacating the majority of the injunction. Our approach and work have not really changed as of yet. So we do 72 hour noticing of the 10 locations that we address per week,” said David Nakanishi, MPH, Healthy Streets Operation Center Manager.

Their data shows a total of 41 people were contacted on Monday and Tuesday. All were offered shelter, but 34 of those people or 82% refused.

“Behavior change takes time,” said Nakanishi and added, “The challenge is that for someone who is chronically homeless to be able to move them from the street into permanent housing or even accepting shelter it’s a long process.”

San Francisco can now enforce laws relating to homeless sweeps following court rulings

A member of the city’s Homelessness oversight commission calls the sweeps inhumane.

“The way that things are happening right now is extremely traumatic to the people that are losing their belongings. When you are outside, all you have is your belongings so to lose that, is a trauma,” said Whit Guerrero, Commissioner of the SF Homelessness oversight commission.

Nakanishi said the city’s approach is compassionate.

“The fact that we could do more 51/50’s which is an involuntary hold for either psychiatric or substance use reasons. There are people at that level on the street that it’s unconscionable as a clinician for me to leave them on the street and not try to address that. So, I think we are approaching as respectfully and with concern and compassion as we can. I wouldn’t be associated with this otherwise”

MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Inside look at how SF stores items collected from homeless encampment sweeps

We waited, but Ramon did not show up at the location the city asked him to meet. The city’s street team said they will follow up with Ramon and offer him shelter again.

Nakanishi said one of the reasons people decline shelter in many cases is because it’s not the type of shelter they want. For example, a single room, or a hotel room that may not be available at that time.

The team in charge of the resolutions said gaining people’s trust is part of the process.

Nakanishi said anyone whose belongings were removed can go to the Public Works retrieval site and collect their items.

As wildfires burned thousands of acres across the Front Range on Wednesday, some residents heeded early morning calls to leave while others opted to stay put on land that already required extra self-sufficiency.

At the Dakota Ridge High School, the evacuation site for the Quarry fire burning near Deer Creek Canyon in Jefferson County, John Banks coughed in the parking lot as smoke from the fire threatening his neighborhood hung heavily in the air.

Banks and his wife, Diane, fled the fire early Wednesday after a 1:30 a.m. phone call ordered them to evacuate.

The couple slept in their car overnight with their rescue cat, Mea, and the few items they scooped from their home after the evacuation call: medications, some clothes, John’s oxygen tanks and cancer medications, and Mea’s food and litter.

They left everything else behind in the home where they’ve lived for 34 years.

“These are just things,” said Banks, 78.

He paused, emotion creeping into his voice.

“If you lose things, you still have your friends, your family.”

The couple found a hotel to stay in for the next night and planned to spend Wednesday going to pre-scheduled doctor appointments.

“Life throws spitballs at you,” John Banks said. “But you keep going.”

When the couple arrived at the evacuation center at Dakota Ridge High School at 3 a.m. Wednesday, they were one of the first people to arrive.

By 9 a.m., dozens of cars were parked at the school — some of the nearly 600 households ordered to evacuate from the Quarry fire. A few evacuees took time to walk their dogs. In the next lot over, a Denver Fire Department crew suited up to respond to the fire.

Elden Coombs, 85, sat with his neighbors in the parking lot waiting for news. He moved to the Homewood Park neighborhood in 1969 and has lived through two other fires, a blizzard and two floods.

He left his home after getting the evacuation call at about 2 a.m. He grabbed some clothes, important documents and his medicine and fled.

“I haven’t been to bed,” he said. “I just hope they get the fire under control.”

At the frontlines of the Stone Canyon fire north of Lyons, Boulder County sheriff’s Sgt. Cody Sears patrolled the still-unburned areas where flames were flaring and spreading.

“So far, so good. We’ll see what the winds do,” Sears said as he rolled out around 11 a.m. Wednesday

He went first to an area where flames had taken a run to the northeast, threatening evacuated houses a couple of miles north of Lyons, then headed to terrain straddling Boulder and Larimer counties, a few miles south of the Alexander Mountain Fire — where residents apparently had elected to stay, hunkering down on their land.

Through smoke on Dakota Ridge Road, Sears spotted two horses: one brown, one white. He radioed county animal control crews, alerting them to a possible rescue. He was uneasy. “This fire is still really active,” he said.

But he and fellow officers, reaching homes there, found residents well in control.

At a front door in the area, Carmen Roberts, 50, came to the door and told him she and her family had stayed through the night. They had water tanks, heavy equipment, and were ready to evacuate with their horses if the flames came too close, she said.

“We’ve have been here over 30 years. We’ve been through these things several times,” Roberts said. “We have everything packed, out by the door. We are going to go if we need to.”

They’d slept a bit through the night. “When it happens over and over and over, the stress is less,” she said.

Yet fire perils seem to be increasing along Colorado’s Front Range, Roberts acknowledged. The problem is more and more people moving in, she said. “Fire is worse now because it affects more people. It is threatening more homes because there are more homes around.”

Near the top of Stone Canyon, business owner Matthew Lee, too, had spent the night on his property — 80 acres where he’d grazed cattle this spring before moving them away about three weeks ago, leaving the grass short enough to ease his worries.

The fire was burning within a quarter mile of his metal-roofed house.

He’d parked down the hill and, leaning on the back of his truck, looked upward. On Tuesday night, power went out at 10:30 p.m. and his cellphone went dead, said Lee, 55.

Early Wednesday, he told Sears, flames crested over the ridge. Slurry bombers dropped red fire retardant on that terrain as he watched.

He had declined to evacuate — like other self-reliant residents in the foothills north of Lyons. He lauded Colorado’s approach of aggressive fire suppression, dousing flames before fires can run their natural course.

“The most I have seen,” he said. “Yesterday, it was an air show. That’s good.”

Originally Published: July 31, 2024 at 7:49 p.m.

After patchy clouds in the morning, the sunshine finally returned this afternoon in full force and temperatures returned to average. It was the first above average temperature in 10 days for Seattle. We are going to continue to warm up through the weekend. 

Highs today topped out in the upper 70s to low 80s, with plenty of sunshine. 

Tonight we will see clear skies with mild overnight lows. Calm conditions with lows in the mid to upper 50s. 

Regional Overnight Lows 

Thursday we will see plenty of sunshine with only a few passing clouds through the afternoon.

Temperatures are going to soar back into the mid to upper 80s and even some low 90s.

Regional Highs Tomorrow 

The extended forecast is looking well above average and peaking in the upper 80s to low 90s.

The warm and dry weather ahead will also increase the fire risk levels, especially for central and eastern Washington. Temperatures will be very warm and there are chances of dry thunderstorms overnight Saturday into Sunday.

FIRE DANGER (FOX 13 Seattle)

Skies will remain sunny and dry into early next week thanks to a building ridge of high pressure. Perfect conditions for Seafair Weekend!