On a bone dry November afternoon in 2008 a group of college students hiked up a Montecito hillside and snuck onto a private viewpoint known as the Tea Gardens. They were there to party, and though they were hardly the first to do so, my guess is they were the last. They gathered around a bonfire until late into the night, and as they left, they covered over the fire’s ashes thinking they had put it out.
They were wrong.
When Sundowner winds arrived the following day, gusting to 85 miles per hour, smoldering embers uncovered by the intensity of the wind ignited the nearby grass and within the hour had burned dozens of homes. Known as the Tea Fire, it destroyed 210 homes in a matter of hours and became what some called the first “billion dollar fire”— all before midnight that evening.
I was on the scene that day covering the fire, first from Westmont’s campus as the fire torched everything in sight, and later on Las Alturas Road as the fire climbed out of Sycamore Canyon and onto the eastern edge of the Santa Barbara riviera.
I watched as some of the most heroic fire fighting efforts I’d ever seen played out right before me, in attempts to save home after home, often in a vain.
This devastation didn’t have to happen.
Re-Writing the same old story
Eighteen years and a dozen major fires later, not a lot has changed on the fire line — with one exception. The fires are now coming more often.
In 1991 when I wrote my Santa Barbara Wildfires book in the aftermath of the 1990 Paint Fire (also known as the Painted Cave Fire), I chronicled a history of significant fires that have occurred here on average every seven years — or eight total over the previous 40 years to that point.
Seventeen years passed until the next big one — the 2007 Zaca Fire — which burned out most of the backcountry but thankfully spared the homes. But in the two decades since, we’ve had over a dozen more wildfires, beginning with the Tea Fire in 2008 up to the Lake Fire and Gifford fires in 2024-2025.
Wildfires have now become so frequent that the question is less ‘when’ and more ‘where’ will the next local one start? A common factor in all of them is their source of ignition, which is in almost all cases human-related.
The human antagonist
Each is a fire that did not need to happen. Some will lay blame for our local wildfire proliferation at the feet of our warming Mediterranean climate, rugged mountain topography, dense chaparral vegetation, or Sundowner winds. All are critical compounding factors, but none are the cause.
Instead, we see a pattern repeated over and over: sometimes through carelessness, sometimes negligence, sometimes accident, and sometimes, appallingly, by intention. Regardless of the particulars, according to the National Park Service, we humans cause an overwhelming 85% of all wildland fires.
The result is our current reality. Rarely do we have a year without a major wildfire.
After the Zaca Fire of ’07 and Tea Fire of ’08 came the 2009 Jesusita Fire, sparked by a volunteer vegetation management crew using weed wackers. On the 2nd day of that fire I sat on top of Inspiration Point with dozens of Hotshot crews watching the flames head directly down into Mission Canyon and in a few hours destroy 80 homes along with a similar number of outbuildings.
The tragedy of this parade of fires is stark: 300 homes and dozens of outbuildings reduced to ashes, families devastated, hillsides denuded, lives altered, and hundreds of millions in cost.
Since then, we’ve had more than a dozen more major wildfires either on the front side of the Santa Ynez Mountains or nearby. It is not a record to be proud of.
Rewriting the wildfire script
Luckily, we have finally come to realize that we cannot survive the next and the next and the next fire unless we accept that wildfire is an inherent part of living on the Central Coast. In response, we must dedicate appropriate resources to sustainably adapt to wildfire. This does not simply mean larger fire departments, more engines and more crews — although these are important — but taking the time to learn how to become resilient to the next wildfire.
The good news is that the changes needed to accomplish this goal are being made at all levels from the state down to the county and city. This includes more wildfire funding, changes to the fire codes, an emphasis on wildfire management at the wildland-urban interface (WUI), prescribed burns and a focus on home hardening, defensible space and community planning.
Locally, the Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council has played a major role in supporting these efforts thanks to funding that is being supplied by local grants and state dollars, and we are beginning to see a major impact from this work. Crucially, homeowners are gaining better understanding of the importance of these fire hardening measures as well.
A Different Story to Tell
It is my hope that the 2026 Santa Barbara County fire season will tell a different kind of story — not simply one of destruction endured, but of a thoughtful rethinking of what it means to live with wildfire. That means making your outdoor habits as fire-safe as possible, especially in areas where grasses and other flammable vegetation can ignite the next big fire from a single careless spark.
Practically speaking, this means practicing fire-safe habits near our homes, on the road, trail or campsite.
Because the lesson that runs through every charred hillside, every destroyed home and each forced evacuation is the one that fire professionals have quietly understood for decades: the best fire is one that never happens.
