Legion of Angels News Archive

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — From beach resorts to homes with panoramic perches atop the Santa Ynez Mountains, residents of this affluent area are breathing easier, and in clearer air, than just a few days ago.

Firefighters said Thursday they have tamped down the eastern end of a wildfire that once covered this coastal city with a blanket of black smoke. It had threatened homes in an area where the least-expensive homes often cost $1 million or more.

“Everyone worried,” said Lily Teng, 52, owner of Sunset Motel on State Street, the main thoroughfare through Santa Barbara.

She said the fires hurt business, and that smoke, ash and power outages frightened away visitors and customers.

“All my friends were worried.” They went to other friends’ homes, away from the threatened area, she said.

More than 1,300 firefighters remain to fight the blaze, which has burned one home so far. More than 250 homes are still under evacuation orders, but winds have pushed the fire toward wilderness.

“Everyone’s breathing a sigh of relief,” said Rolf Larsen, fire prevention officer with the Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Department.

Nearly 9,500 acres have burned in the Los Padres National Forest, a federal preserve that stretches from just outside Los Angeles northward to Monterey.

The fire is not yet wholly contained, and a shift of winds could bring it back toward homes at any time, said Debbie Becker, a U.S. Forest Service firefighter brought in from Arizona. “Everyone is very wary right now because it’s a hot fire,” Becker said.

Across the state, 1,460 fires have been contained, but more than 320 were active Thursday, authorities said.

In the Sierra Nevada of northern California, firefighters worked to keep a lightning-sparked wildfire from reaching more homes. The wildfire in Butte County destroyed at least 50 homes earlier in the week, mostly in Concow. No other houses were reported lost overnight Wednesday, said Anne McLean, with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

In Paradise, nearly 4,000 homes are at risk if winds shift and a fire jumps Feather River. The blaze is part of a complex of lightning-sparked wildfires that over the past two weeks have charred more than 76 square miles in and around Butte County.

“You almost feel like somebody is out to get you,” said Nancy Henphill, 61, who had to leave her Concow home twice in just over two weeks.

On the state’s central coast, many Big Sur residents returned to their homes Tuesday and Wednesday. At least 27 homes have been destroyed there by a fire that has burned more than 140 square miles.

The clear afternoon sky over Santa Barbara made it easy to forget the fire still burning in the mountains just to the north.

Situated beneath a point jutting into the Pacific, this region’s beaches face southward. The Santa Ynez Mountain range runs east-to-west just above the picture-perfect beaches.

Like much of California, the area has seen fires. But the wilderness area now burning had not burned since 1955, leaving vast acres of old chaparral and brush — explosive fuel for fire. “We’re not turning our back on it yet,” said Robert Bertolina, division supervisor with the U.S. Forest Service, who was directing crew along a ridgeline above the cities of Goleta and neighboring Santa Barbara.

Firefighter Mark Courson only had to drive down the rural road he lives on when the fire broke out July 1. A fire battalion chief with the U.S. Forest Service, Courson lives just to the east along the same ridge where he has spent the last 10 days battling the fire. His home was among those evacuated.

Courson remembers the last fire that hit Santa Barbara in 1990, which destroyed more than 400 homes. “A big fear was a repeat of that” fire, he said. “This had the potential to be a tragic situation.”

Source — USA Today

LOS ANGELES - Firefighters got a gift of a mild, mostly windless night and a forecast for similar conditions Sunday as they attempted to protect thousands of Santa Barbara County homes from a huge wildfire, one of more than 300 taxing their energy and resources around the state.

“The firefighters are stretched thin, they are exhausted,” and some have gone days without sleep, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as he visited a command post in the coastal region of Santa Barbara County, where nearly 2,700 homes were threatened by a four-day-old fire in the Los Padres National Forest. The blaze has blackened about 13 square miles.

Fires have burned more than 800 square miles of land and destroyed at least 69 homes throughout California in the past two weeks. One firefighter died of a heart attack while digging fire lines.

About 1,400 fires have been contained, but more than 330 still were out of control by Sunday morning.

Cooler air
The Santa Barbara County fire, now the state’s top priority, was less active Saturday because of cooler, moist air, said county spokeswoman Pat Wheatley. And evening fell without the return of the late afternoon “sundowner” wind that had sent flames racing up to homes earlier in the week.

“We’ve been pleased by some cooperative weather,” Wheatley said. “The ’sundowners’ that we were afraid could happen did not happen much tonight so that gave us an opportunity to fight the fire without fighting the winds.”

The fire was 28 percent contained, she said.

Over 2,600 homes were under mandatory evacuation orders Saturday and residents of 1,400 others were warned to be ready to flee if the flames gathered speed.

The fire, fueled by 15-foot-high, half-century-old chaparral, still had the potential to roll through a hilly area of ranches, housing tracts and orchards between the town of Goleta and Santa Barbara, keeping firefighters on their toes.

“They’re feeling very good about this, but they are not taking this fire lightly at all,” Wheatley said.

Temperatures dipped to around 60 degrees during the night, but were forecast to reach the high 70s later Sunday.

Nearly 1,200 firefighters were assisted by a DC-10 air tanker and other aircraft dumping water and fire retardant along ridges and in steep canyons.

Investigators think the fire, which began Tuesday, was human-caused. The U.S. Forest Service on Saturday asked for public help in determining who set it and whether it was sparked accidentally or on purpose.

Meanwhile, cooler weather helped crews attacking the two-week-old blaze that has destroyed 22 homes in Big Sur, at the northern end of the Los Padres forest, but the fire continued to grow slowly on all flanks Saturday night.

The fire, which had blackened 111 square miles, was only 5 percent contained with full containment not expected until July 30, but morning fog that moved in from the sea helped prevent it from advancing on Big Sur’s famed restaurants and hotels.

“We’re gaining ground, but we’re nowhere near being done,” said Gregg DeNitto, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. “There’s still a lot of potential out there. The fire has been less active the last couple of days. We’ve had favorable weather; they are taking every opportunity to get some line on it.”

The weather was expected to become hotter and drier over the next couple of days, he said, with wind and temperatures rising and humidity dropping.

“The fire still has the potential for movement and the potential to get out of our containment lines,” he said.

Source — MSNBC