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SANTA CRUZ — In the wake of a small weekend fire, a man was found dead in a tent on the outskirts of the city’s largest homeless encampment, authorities say.

The man’s official cause of death remained under investigation Tuesday, pending an autopsy by the Santa Cruz County Coroner’s Office.

According to Santa Cruz Fire Chief Rob Oatey, there was no evidence of foul play in the Saturday night fire, though he said he could not speak to the tent occupant’s cause of death.

“At this point, it’s still under investigation but we’re leaning toward accidental, human-caused. Possibly either a candle and/or smoking material, like a lighter or something like that,” Oatey said. “That’s based on witness reports. There were two different people who said they saw a flickering inside the tent, something small.”

Firefighters were called to a report of a fire at 8:52 p.m. Saturday, eventually located confined to a single 6-foot-by-6-foot tent across from the park’s children’s playground, near the Branciforte Creek pedestrian bridge. The site was apart from the larger San Lorenzo Park Benchlands homeless encampment, Oatey said. The tent had not been set up just a couple days earlier, when Oatey said he personally went out to the encampment as part of the Fire Department’s fire education and outreach efforts.

As to reports of explosions at the scene, Oatey said fire investigators located a compressed gas cylinder for bug spray and a small camping stove-type fuel container, either propane or butane, that had gone off when heated up.

“There was no other large explosion, no local damage to the fence nearby, the lights,” Oatey said. “If there was a significant explosion, you would have seen collateral damage to property in the surrounding area or even some sort of crater.” Related Articles Crime and Public Safety | California court OKs death penalty in ’80s sex slave murders Crime and Public Safety | Anzar Fire fully contained Crime and Public Safety | PG&E profits and revenue drop, wildfire efforts widen Crime and Public Safety | Map: Oak Fire evacuations and perimeter near Yosemite Crime and Public Safety | Spread of Oak Fire near Yosemite National Park slows

Oatey said he is aware that people are cooking, smoking and keeping warm inside their tents, but said his personnel continues to “religiously” urge camp occupants to avoid open flames inside the tents “because they will catch fire rather quickly.”

“And of course, if you’re sleeping, they don’t have smoke detectors, and that’s what keeps people safe in homes,” Oatey said.

Oatey said his department set up safety rules — including a requirement that the tents remain at least 6 feet apart — when Santa Cruz city officials first established the encampment for 122 tents in April 2021.

“We set up standards a long time ago and have been trying to enforce them, but it’s an uphill battle that we are losing. We try again,” Oatey said. “Unfortunately, it’s a revolving door of outreach, education, enforcement. But then, (fires) still keep happening. Due to significant shortages of staffing and staff time to dedicate to that, we educate and conduct outreach, but the enforcement piece is pretty difficult.”

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