My Account of the Santa Barbara Tea Fire

Tea Fire, November 13, 2008

5:50 P.M.

I was on the couch watching the news when a friend called to say there was a fire above Montecito. I drove over to Gibralter Rd., where there was a good view to the east. The fire was burning along a ridge about a quarter mile above Mountain Drive, 4 miles to our east, and heading south very rapidly. I could see emergency vehicles winding along the roads. Within a few minutes, the fire had jumped Mountain Drive. When a Santa Barbara County Sheriff arrived to close the road, I headed home, calling my nephew Justin and asking him to drive up to our place to help Laura, his 89-year-old grandmother, pack up and leave. Her small house sits on a parcel adjacent to ours, at the bottom of the hill. My wife, Story, was at a class in town. I couldn't reach her.

6:30 P.M.

When I got home, I stopped at Laura's house. Justin was already there, stuffing the cat into its travel cage and loading up Laura's Jeep. Story called me and I headed up the hill to our house. On the way, I ran into Raven, the young woman who takes care of Story's horses. Her boyfriend, Andy, had driven her up there, and she was saddling up to ride and lead the two horses down towards town. I did not envy her, on the road with 2 horses in 60 mile-per-hour winds while emergency vehicles raced uphill with sirens wailing. Andy, whose house on Mountain Drive is very close to the start of the fire, had been in town and could not get home.

7:10 P.M.

Story was already at our house, distributing the white K-Mart laundry baskets bought years before for just this event. Into these baskets went paintings and sculpture, photographs and papers, everything that could never be replaced. We had done this before during fire threats, so it was obvious what to load up. Musical instruments, computer hard drives, boxes of important papers, a suitcase full of clothes for each of us, pets and pet food. The cat could not be found -- a problem for Story.

7:40 P.M.

Three of my co-workers, Mike, Thad, and Carlos, arrived to help. They carried everything down to the driveway, starting by filling the old Suburban we keep just for this purpose. Then they loaded their trucks with furniture and all of my tools from the shed. At this point, the Mt. Calvary ridge and St. Mary's Seminary to our east was still blocking any direct view of flames, but the ever-growing red glow in the sky was ominous.

8:10 P.M.

Story left for town while the guys pulled out all of the fire hoses, pumps and foaming equipment from the steel box where it had all been sitting for years. They unrolled hoses and attached them to hydrants around the house. They hooked up the hoses to a device which injects fire retardant into the water, and made a complete circuit of the house, covering all the doors, windows and exposed wood with a sticky, soapy foam. We could now see huge flames on the ridges to the east.

8:45 P.M.

Mike, Thad, and Carlos left for town. I drove down to the 2 other houses on the lower parcel. Laura lives in a frame house built in 1977. Fifteen years ago, we installed a fire sprinkler system on the outside of the house. It is built from PVC pipe strapped under the eaves and on the roof, fitted with about 20 big Rainbird rotating sprinklers, and controlled with a 2" valve. It had not been tested for a few years. I opened up the valve and the system charged. Almost immediately, I heard a "pop", and saw that a joint had come unglued up near the roof. Bummer. I had to shut it off. I went down to the other house, a beautiful, hundred-year-old redwood farmhouse where our good friends Walter and Patty live with their daughter, Estelle. We had installed a hydrant at the deck years ago and left 100 feet of fire hose coiled up and ready. I hooked up the hose to the hydrant and unrolled the full 100 feet.

9:10 P.M.

I got back up to my house. I got some PVC glue in order to repair Laura's sprinklers and tied an extension ladder on the roof of my truck. As I started down the road, a Sheriff's cruiser raced up next to me. The officer told me there was a mandatory evacuation and I had to leave immediately. I agreed and drove down the driveway while he negotiated the 3-point turn in front of our house. Halfway down the hill, I turned into one of the dirt roads that serve our avocado grove and shut off my lights. A moment later, the sheriff drove down the driveway and out towards town.

9:30 P.M.

I set the ladder against Laura's house and climbed up to re-glue the broken pipe. I would have to let it dry at least an hour, so I left the system "off" and headed back up the hill.

9:45 P.M.

To my horror, I saw Mt. Calvary Retreat House completely engulfed in flames. This beautiful and historic structure, 2 ridges to the east, was a mansion built by a Mid-western millionaire in the 1920's, later gifted to the Anglican Church. In recent years, it has served as a retreat house for seminars, religious conferences, yoga intensives, etc. It was shocking to see it in flames, 1/2 mile away. The fire had now moved 3 miles towards us. I sat in my truck, listening to the local radio, staring eastward, waiting for the glue to dry, wondering where the fire would hit our property first. There was, as yet, no sign of fire fighters, although Rattlesnake Canyon, between Mt. Calvary and St. Mary's Seminary on the closest ridge, was certainly burning, as the orange glow from behind St. Mary's got bigger and brighter.

10:50 P.M.

I now had the answer. I could see flames coming around the slope directly below and to the south of St. Mary's. This meant the 2 lower structures would be threatened first. I drove down the hill.

11:00 P.M.

I turned on the system at Laura's house and the PVC repair held! The house was quickly drenched in water, pouring off the roof and under the eaves. I ran down to the Walter and Patty's house. The fire was a few hundred feet away, racing down the hill through brush and dried grass as it headed towards the eucalyptus trees that line the creek at the east side of the property. These trees are less than 100 feet from the house and were already catching fire and showering the house with embers. A big live oak sits in front of the house, covering most of the roof with its branches. Close behind the house sits a redwood tree which covers much of the rest of the roof. I opened the hydrant and began to pour hundreds of gallons of water into these trees and onto the roof to keep the embers from igniting the trees and the house. It worked.

11:25 P.M.

Fire trucks began to arrive and attack the fire in the eucalyptus trees. Meanwhile, spot fires had appeared all over the avocado grove behind the houses. Dead leaves, the mulch below the trees, were burning, although the avocados had not yet ignited. I went up to Laura's house. It might drown, but it would not burn.

12:00 A.M.

The wind began to abate. Immediately, the firemen went on the offensive, now better able to manage the spread of the fire. More trucks arrived, perhaps 4 in all, with 15 - 20 crewmen. If the wind stayed calm, our driveway was the south-western boundary of the Tea Fire. The row of Eucalyptus, which stretches next to our driveway for perhaps 800 feet northward, was being ignited by burning debris at ground level, moving slowly towards our house. The firemen stretched the hose from Walter and Patty's house down to the road to refill the tanks in their engines. More engines and crews arrived. The strategy appeared to be to put an engine in the driveway of every house in the neighborhood.

1:15 A.M.

I could see that something was burning up at the property of our neighbors, Greg and Judith. They live to the west of our avocado grove, atop the next small ridge. Airborne embers must have leapfrogged the grove, the horse pasture to its west, and the row of eucalyptus at the property line. I drove up and found an engine from the City of Arcadia Fire Department. The house was unhurt, although they had lost the small building that served as Greg's office. Firemen were hosing down spot fires in the olive trees. They had saved the house.

2:00 A.M

An SUV with 2 commanders arrived, heading up the road to our house. They were from the Simi Valley Fire Dept., and they were scouting for a spot to station 1 or 2 engines in case the fire moved around the north side of St. Mary's, across the canyon, straight towards our house. They liked the spot, and called for an engine, which arrived in a few minutes with a crew of 4. One commander instructed these guys to get out chain saws and start clearing brush further down the steep hill in front of our house. They asked if they could take out an olive tree and a small oak right next to the driveway. No problem. We were proud of the "defensible space" we had cleared around our house over the years. For these firemen, however, it was not enough. The slope is steep and thick with chaparral that hasn't burned since 1964. It is what they call a "chimney", and the eucalyptus trees at the bottom, 500 feet or so away, were crowning with flame. I made coffee.

3:30 A.M.

All of a sudden, the northwest corner of the fire came over the closest ridge to our east. The chaparral was sending flames up 50 feet or more. The fire was now coming straight at our house from 2 directions. Stan, the commander from Simi, asked me to turn my truck around and point it down the road. He said it might get "very exciting". I complied, then made more coffee.

4:00 A.M.

The wind was now almost completely still. The fire had stopped moving. It was about 400 yards to our east and 250 yards to our south. The fire crew sat waiting. By now, helicopters with night vision capability were dropping water and retardant on the edges of the fire.

6:30 A.M.

I started calling neighbors to give them reports on their houses. I drove back to Gibralter Rd. and saw incredible devastation. Many houses gone, the chaparral completely gone from the steep mountain sides, Mt. Calvary just a smoking ruin with its chimney still upright. When I got home, the firemen were resting in their rigs.

11:00 A.M.

Several engines and crew trucks arrived down in the eucalyptus forest. These were the "hand crews", brought in to manually finish off the fire with picks and shovels. They were amazing. They cut a trail along the northern boundary of the fire below our house and hauled hundreds of feet of yellow hose up the steep hill from the engines. They call their work "flood and grub". The smoldering debris is slowly turned over and flooded and broken up until they are sure it is cold. Very labor-intensive, particularly on a steep hill in hot weather. Their average age looked to be about 21. These guys made me think about Ronald Reagan, who once said: "The scariest 9 words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'. " What an asshole.

12:00 P.M

The Simi Valley Fire Dept. engine company departed, confident that the hand crews, the helicopters, and the huge DC-10 that was now dropping 12,000 gallons of retardant with each pass, would put this fire to bed.

1:00 P.M.

I put myself to bed until dark.

Cautionary Afterthoughts:

Four days later:

The Tea Fire has been declared 100% contained.

Re-reading the time-line, I worry that someone else will get hurt trying to fight a brush fire without some critical advantages that favored us:

1) Being on the western fringe of the fire, we had far more warning than most of the victims. The fire took 6 hours to reach us. By that time, fire engines were here from cities 100 miles away.

2) We were incredibly lucky to have the wind stop when and where it stopped.

3) We had been anticipating this event and planning for decades.

4) We live on a large parcel of land. We don't have to concern ourselves with danger from our neighbors' landscaping or building materials.

5) I am a plumbing contractor with appropriate skills.

6) We have a private well and water storage as a back-up to municipal water supplies.

Having since found out about friends who lost their homes, and seen the destruction in their neighborhoods, it feels somewhat inappropriate to communicate our good fortune.

Finally, the incident with the sheriff is troubling. He was doing his best to save people's lives, while risking his own. He and I both knew he could not legally force me off my property, so my evasion was the simplest solution, avoiding any discussion of the situation.

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

Unfortunately, calling it the "Tea Fire" tends to blunt in the public mind the chaos such fires unleash on all concerned. But I'm glad your house was spared. Losing a home would be such a big psychological blow for anyone, no matter the circumstances.

[pencilpusher]

Preparation is the key here in So Cal against fire and earthquake. It obviously worked for you and yours. Congratulations on the good work, and thanks for the great first person account. Maybe it will inspire others.

[Bill Swadley - Huffpost Blogger]

I lived in Santa Barbara during the big Riviera fire in the late 70's. When I saw the Tea fire on the news from my home in LA, I could hardly believe it was happening again.

But that was 30 years ago. I couldn't even pick up the phone and call anyone to say, "The hills are burning again." I'd lost touch with them all.

Congratulations, Peter, on having "been anticipating this event and planning for decades." It was literally decades in the making.

[olivesforbreakfast]

Amazing first hand report. Thank you, Peter, for a great job.