Well, we still haven’t burned up. Seriously, it’s summer and that means Yet Another Santa Barbara Fire. This one, the Whittier Fire, started a week ago with a car fire along the 154 San Marcos Pass road, and has now burned over 17,000 acres, with 1600 crew fighting it last night. And last night was one of those evenings that make Southern California firefighting challenging and famous: the “sundowner” winds blow down-slope from the ridge-tops to the ocean, and fires can explode, sometimes jumping a mile from a hot spot, and capable of a steady 2mph progress; all of it in rugged coastal mountain canyons and ridges, thick with decades of unburned brush.
Anyway, the good news is that the crews and aircraft built a perimeter around the city-side of the fire over the last couple of days, so in spite of the (mild) sundowners last night they were able to keep it up in the canyons and not progressing into the communities below. Several friends were under mandatory evacuation orders last night (and probably this weekend), another person I know who lives at the top of the ridge hasn’t been home in a week. Today I expect we’ll see aerial retardant drops and a lot of smoke over the more-populated coast, but it would appear that these professional firefighters have this thing mostly figured out. Of course, if the winds kick up higher it could jump the lines and head for the coast, but we’ll cross our fingers and hope for the best. Maybe leave a little offering to the weather Goddess…
Here’s some classic Santa Barbara fire porn:
Photo credits: most posted by Mike Eliason (SBCFD), Ray Ford (Noozhawk.com).