While I covered the progress of the fire for the mainbar, I filed three sidebars:
Firefighters trapped in burning house
How the other half evacuates (after jump)
Evacuees long for normalcy of home (after jump)
Malibu firefighters trapped while battling Santa Barbara wildfire
By Raquel Maria Dillon | ASSOCIATED PRESS 5/7/09
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) _ Battalion Chief Scott Smith’s yellow jacket reeked of wood smoke and his eyes were red with exhaustion at the Emergency Operations Center.
Earlier, one of his crews nearly lost its engine to the flames and Smith fetched them out of a burning home where they had taken shelter Wednesday amid a wildfire near Santa Barbara that had charred 500 acres and driven thousands from their homes.
“The fire front came up the hill fast and got in front of the engine,” which was backed into a driveway at the end of a narrow street, said Smith, a firefighter for 30 years who plans to retire next year.
The four-man crew on the engine — No. 70 out of Malibu — were wetting down a home when they ran out of water, he said. They had no time to hook up to a hydrant down the street as the flames fast approached so the men took shelter in the home’s garage, which Smith said is a standard procedure.
When it got too hot in the garage, they moved inside the house.
“They were safe in there for a certain amount of time,” Smith said.
Once the bulk of the fire had passed, Smith and another firefighter went up the hill to get them out.
“When I got there the side of the garage was on fire,” Smith said.
Smith fetched his crew out of the home and they struggled to connect the engine to a water line.
“Heat and smoke had killed the engine and we had to cool it down and restart it,” he said.
“By the time we got done with the engine, the house was already too far gone.”In the blur of the moment, the 54-year-old firefighter didn’t notice anything about the home, or even which street he was on, because his sport utility vehicle’s GPS didn’t report it.
“No one got hurt, just a little dirty,” he said, spreading his hands as if to demonstrate that he still had all ten dusty fingers. One of the firefighters felt sick because of dehydration, was treated at a hospital and later returned to work.
Engine 70 made it down the hill back to headquarters on its own power. But it was streaked with soot and smoke and its plastic signals had melted slightly in the heat.
“It was either the guys or the house,” Smith said, “and with me it’s always my guys.”
Rich Santa Barbara evacuees flee homes for hotels
By Raquel Maria Dillon | ASSOCIATED PRESS 5/8/2009
GOLETA, Calif. (AP) _ While dozens of homes burned in the hillsides above Santa Barbara, some of this wealthy city’s evacuees decamped to the lush golfing greens, faux Spanish buildings and sparkling blue pools at an exclusive resort a few miles away.
The four-star Bacara Resort offered a fire season discount to locals who fled the flames: $199 per night, instead of the normal rate of $475.
Even though disaster loomed in the hillsides above their homes, many in the hillside neighborhoods couldn’t pass up the deals at local luxury hotels. The Montecito Inn, also upwind of the smoke and ash, cut its room rate from $265 to $99 for evacuees and was fully booked Thursday night.
Evacuee Christine Feldner said her family usually waited out fires at friends’ homes, but her friends have been evacuated too. So she took her two boys, ages 8 and 10, to the hotel, where they spent the afternoon playing with friends in the pool, and the hotel modified its pet policy to allow the family’s black Labrador to stay in the room with them.
“This has been such a great distraction for all of us,” Feldner said. “There are so many people here from our school, we could hold a PTA meeting.”
But Scott Wilson, a contractor who evacuated with his wife and 1-year-old daughter, spent Thursday spraying down his home with water and sweeping up ash before he checked into the hotel.
But sitting on the pool deck was hardly relaxing with the worry that his house might not be there when he checks on it next.
“I’ve been a sailor all my life, and when I look out at the ocean, all I see is whitecaps and that’s not good,” Wilson said.
Just ten miles west, overlooking the pool where children played, Murray Jamison enjoyed the king-size bed and tried not to think about the fire raging near her home.
“The Best Western was booked, but I got lucky. I got a room with a view of the ocean,” she said. “That’s what we live here for.”
Santa Barbara wildfire evacuees longed for normalcy of home, even the drudgery of weeding
By Raquel Maria Dillon | ASSOCIATED PRESS 5/9/09
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) _ As a wildfire raged for days in the mountains above town, thousands forced from their homes took shelter in evacuation centers, hotels, homes of friends and family — and even on boats in the city’s harbor.
Until most mandatory evacuations were lifted Saturday, they passed anxious hours by keeping their eyes on the distant flames or on TV newscasts.
Jack Byers, 72, his wife, dog and four in-laws piled into his 53-foot trawler, the Serenghetti, after fleeing Wednesday.
“Every night, we’ve been gathering at the yacht club to have a drink and watch the flames in the hills,” said Byers, a general contractor.
In the mornings, the harbor’s Breakwater Restaurant was packed for breakfast, with evacuees table-hopping to get updates on whose home was threatened, Byers said Friday night.
At Brophy Brothers, a dockside seafood restaurant and bar, bartender Jack Bokron said the TV stayed tuned to the local news channel for the latest on the fire, despite some patrons’ requests to check in on sports games.
“It all begins to sound the same after a while — the winds, the firefighters, the warnings — but you prick up your ears when there’s something new,” said Bokron. “If you live here, you care about your town, your friends and their homes, no matter how big or small.”
Like many Santa Barbarans, Bokron had four friends staying at his house. Some families opened their homes to friends and relatives only to find themselves also fleeing the flames a few hours later.
They packed a Red Cross evacuation center at a University of California at Santa Barbara gym, which was transformed with rows and rows of cots, snack tables and long lines for the showers.
Gisella Leon, 33, sent her three children, ages 6, 9 and 10, to the children’s activity area, where volunteer college students entertained the littlest refugees with books, games and movies. She hoped they would tire themselves out and sleep.
“It’s a little noisy even at night,” she said.
Diane Lacey, 44, a lab coordinator at Raytheon, passed time doing Sudoku puzzles and talking on the phone with her mother in Oregon. On Friday afternoon, she went to visit her two cats, Bubbie and Beebz, in a cage at an animal shelter.
“Poor things. I fed them some treats and cried into their fur. It’s probably the stress,” she said.
As she watched TV news around a wide-screen TV, she said she longed for the chores and drudgery of home.
“I’d love to spend the weekend pulling weeds,” she said wistfully. “I feel like a whiney teenager saying this, but I promise I’ll do the all dishes if I could only go home tomorrow.”