Mountain becomes ‘inferno’
A DC-10 tanker drops fire retardant on an unburned area Friday as efforts to fight the Jesusita fire continue in the mountains above Santa Barbara, Calif..
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Turning the horizon a lurid orange and raining embers on roofs as it advanced, a raging wildfire that has destroyed scores of homes in the hills menaced this celebrity enclave and other coastal towns Friday, and the number of people ordered to flee climbed to 30,000.
Authorities warned an additional 23,000 to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
Columns of smoke rose off the Santa Ynez Mountains as the 4-day-old blaze – fanned by “sundowner” winds that sweep down the slopes in the evening – blew up from 2,700 acres to 3,500 acres in less than a day, creating a firefighting front five miles long.
“It’s crazy. The whole mountain looked like an inferno,” said Maria Martinez, 50, who with her fiance hurriedly left her home in San Marcos Pass, on the edge of Santa Barbara. The couple went to an evacuation center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
An unknown number of homes were destroyed in the blowup that began Thursday night, in addition to the estimated 75 houses that burned the night before on the ridges and in the canyons above Santa Barbara.
No deaths or serious injuries were reported.
The number of people ordered to evacuate rose from 12,000 the night before as the blaze pushed west toward neighboring Goleta and east toward well-to-do Montecito.
“Last night, all hell broke loose,” Santa Barbara Fire Chief Andrew DiMizio said Friday morning, recounting firefighters’ efforts to put out roof fires and keep flames out of his section of the city.
The eight-member Wasjutin family arrived at the university campus in three cars and a trailer packed with four dogs, eight baby chickens, two cockatiels, an iguana, a rat named Cutie and an African spur tortoise. They fled their 40-acre San Marcos Pass property after watching the flames grow closer. They left three horses and three hens behind.
“We drove down through fire on both sides,” Silvia Wasjutin, 48, a speech pathologist, said.
In a scene of strange contrasts, students bicycled to classes and midterms as ash fell on campus, and boats bobbed in Santa Barbara’s harbor as smoke rose from the mountains above town.
The Santa Barbara area has long been a favorite of celebrities. Oprah Winfrey has an estate in Montecito, where Charlie Chaplin’s old seaside escape, the Montecito Inn, has stood since 1928. A ranch in the mountains that Ronald and Nancy Reagan bought became his Western retreat during his presidency.
A U.S. Forest Service fire engine is in place at a home that is threatened by an approaching wildfire in Santa Barbara, Calif.