It’s 7:30 a.m. on a gray Wednesday and I sit at my desk beneath the familiar June gloom, wondering when the next big wildfire will start.
June 27 marks 36 years since the Painted Cave Fire raced from the San Marcos Pass area into Santa Barbara neighborhoods. The anniversary brings back an uneasy question: What does this year’s fire season have in store for us?
I’ve written on just about every major Santa Barbara fire since Painted Cave and reported on each one since the Zaca Fire began on July 4, 2007. That fire would become our county’s second largest ever by burn area–over 240,000 acres.Â
Yet, the fires I remember most are not necessarily the largest. The 2008 Tea and 2009 Jesusita fires burned far fewer acres, but together they destroyed nearly 300 homes, including many belonging to close friends of mine.
A fire’s true scale is not measured only in acres. It is measured in what it takes from the people in its path.
When the Wind Turns
I remember the Jesusita Fire especially well because of my friends Patti and Bob Bryant. Their home had burned once before, 45 years earlier in the 1964 Coyote Fire. During Jesusita, it would burn again.
It was another Wednesday morning on the fire line, but as we neared 11 a.m. June’s protective fog gave way to a blistering sun. I was with several dozen hotshots from around Southern California, all working furiously to cut a defensive perimeter intended to keep the fire out of Mission Canyon. Air tankers were overhead, laying down bright red strips of retardant.
Then, just after 1:30 p.m., the wind shifted 180 degrees. Within minutes, gusts of 30 to 40 mph were driving the fire directly downhill toward Mission Canyon — a firefighter’s worst nightmare.
A few minutes earlier, I had been thinking about lunch. Now I was huddled with fire crews, listening as calls for assistance came in by the dozens. We were suddenly in the middle of a rapidly unfolding — and potentially life-threatening — disaster.
Within hours, Bob and Patti’s home would be burning alongside dozens of others.
What a Fire Takes
Later that afternoon, once it was safe to hike down from Inspiration Point with the crews, I made my way along Foothill Road. It was crowded with emergency vehicles and frantic residents trying to escape. Homes were still burning as I continued toward Tunnel Road and then up to Spyglass Ridge, where Bob and Patti lived.
Across the road from their property, only a chimney remained of another home. As I walked up their driveway, flames were visible through the broken windows of their house, which was being burned from the inside out.
I looked through one of the intact panes of glass and watched as the fire consumed the room, curtains and sofa. That was when I realized I was not simply watching a house burn. I was watching a home disappear — and a family’s life be torn apart with it.
On my way out, I stopped beside what had once been a classic sports car. The heat had melted its aluminum wheels, leaving streams of metal beneath the blackened frame. Bob later told me the car had been a gift for Patti.
Bob and Patti eventually rebuilt, but at great cost, particularly because of changes in fire codes and construction requirements. A structure can be rebuilt. The life that existed within it, however, is not so easily restored.
Santa Barbara once had something resembling a defined fire season, running from June through October. By November the seasonal fire fighters would be on to other jobs. The bombers stationed at Santa Maria Airport would be heading back to their winter hangars and we’d breathe a sigh of relief until next year.
Those seasonal boundaries mean much less now. Jesusita began on May 5, 2009, a month and a half earlier than any before it. Today, the next destructive fire could start in almost any month.
Waiting for the Next Alert
Back at my desk, the PulsePoint app on my phone goes off, signaling a fire somewhere nearby.
This one is being called the Mission Fire because of its location near Mission Santa Inés. A tractor has reportedly sparked dry grass in an open meadow.
Crews put it out quickly. This time, the spark remains a small incident.
But after years of covering wildfires, I know that the next big one may begin in exactly the same ordinary way. Until it is contained, no one knows what that first spark will become.
