The East Bay Regional Park District announced the closure of all but its shoreline parks because of wildfires burning across the Bay Area, including in many parks.
There are fires in the Round Valley Regional Preserve, Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, Del Valle Regional Park, Sunol Wilderness Regional Preserve, Ohlone Wilderness Regional Preserve, Mission Peak Regional Preserve and Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park.
The fires are part of what Cal Fire is calling the SCU Lightning Complex, which includes fires in five counties – Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Joaquin and Stanislaus.
Still open are paved trails and Crown Beach State Park, Hayward Regional Shoreline, MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline, McLaughlin East Shore State Park, Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline, Point Isabel Regional Shoreline and Quarry Lakes Regional Recreation Area.
The park district is encouraging people not to use the parks because of poor air quality caused by smoke from the fires.
Parks closed. Restaurants and bars closed. Churches closed. Now it is so smoky that no one can breathe. Walking around the block this morning, it looked as if my neighborhood is in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Just another day in California.
I thought about walking around the block but I still have N95s from the 2018 fire and I don’t enjoy wearing those even though they are quite breathable. I use dusk masks for covid masking but those are hard to find because the stores donated them to frontline workers. I like them better than the surgical masks and cloth masks because they have breathing room too. They are also the cheapest mask available.
I went to Radke Regional Shoreline Park today and it didn’t have a sign up saying closed but according to friends there was a motorbike cop saying people couldn’t go in. It’s not on the list as being closed though also not on the list of Shoreline parks open.