June 27th, 1990, goes down in infamy in Santa Barbara,
California.
The Santa Barbara News Press is doing a 10 year anniversary
retrospective on the
Paint
Cave Fire.
It was a day that we shall NEVER forget. The fire burned 5000 acres and we
lost over 600 homes in 3 hours. The fire came roaring down the mountain,
at 228 feet per minute --during the first 20 minutes. It then jumped over
6 lanes of freeway, burned down the Philadelphia House, our favorite restaurant.
I used to work there when I was 20 and it's where my husband and I had our
first date. The fire came into our neighborhood, burned 6 homes, one on our
street. Our cat of 10 years died from smoke inhalation.
We were just having friends arrive for my husband's 34th birthday party.
As I was laying out food on the glass table by the pool, soot and ashes started landing on the food. It was hotter than
hell out, 109 degrees. I knew that there was
a fire up on the mountain, I saw it as I drove home from the grocery store a half an hour earlier. It was miles away, I wasn't too worried. Then emergency sirens started blasting repeatedly. We turned on the radio and they said the fire was out of control. Everyone immediately knew we were in for a big one and left the party to return to their homes and gather
their belongings and/or try to save their homes. Then All Hell Broke
Loose. The fire jumped the freeway, coming right at us. Sirens blaring,
a large water dropping helicopter went right over my house, no more than
100 feet high. The sky was orange, thick with smoke, and we could hear gas mains
and cars exploding about every 10 seconds. Our eyes burned and our throats were raw. I remember thinking; "This is just a like a scene from the movie Apocolypse Now". It was beyond erie seeing my neighborhood that was so familiar, look like a war zone. We loaded up
our cars with photos, jewelry and a large rabbit cage with our two bunnies.
Our kids went looking for our cat. Puddy, was hiding somewhere in the bushes,
he wouldn't come out from all the noise and commotion. We ended up leaving
without him. I was sick about that, but we had no choice.
A woman in our neighborhood had let her horses run free and she ran by our
house, hysterical. "It's coming, it's coming, get out" she shouted! The fire
department, came by with loud speakers -- "EVACUATE! EVACUATE, IMMEDIATELY!"
More explosions, it was getting closer. In a last ditch effort to save our
house, my husband and 7 year old son David climbed on the roof with hoses
to wet down the dry shake roof. In the end it would not have helped. Everything
in the path of the fire was decimated as the fire reached 3000 degrees. Half
of the kids that went to my kids school, lost everything.
The phone lines were dead. My cell phone was going crazy, as all our friends
knew that our neighborhood, Hope Ranch, was in the direct line of fire. Our
friend Jim Rome was
on the air at KTMS radio station. He was frantically calling our names on
the air, telling listeners to try and contact us and to have us call the
station if we were all right. I told a friend to call Jim, tell him
we are okay and we are evacuating. I got upset with my husband because he
wouldn't come down off the roof. I took the kids to my mother-in-laws house
and watched the drama from TV. My husband arrived a bit later. "It's getting
closer to our house. I had to leave". At 3:00am the TV coverage stopped.
The last thing the reporter said (and I'll never forget) "Well, folks,
the fire is now in Hope Ranch and it's going straight for the ocean. Everything
in its path is destroyed." For 14 hours we thought we had lost our home.
In the late morning we tried to get back into our neighborhood, but the police
wouldn't let us. Finally they let us in. As we went down the street,
I could see that a house on my street was destroyed. But as we neared
our house I could see that all the houses close to ours were intact. Thank
God, our house was saved. Relief and joy. But where was Puddy? I
found him after 3 hours of searching. He was in the bushes, barely
alive. I took him to the vet. "His lungs are scorched, you should put him
down", he said. I couldn't do it and I took him home and tried to nurse
him back to health...(more on Puddy,
here.)
It took 3 days until the fire was fully contained. It was a
miracle that only one person was killed. A woman named Andrea Lang Gurka.
She was stuck on the mountain and she had no car with which to escape. It
was so sad. The fire fighters were real heros trying to battle that blaze.
No, no, we shall never forget that day.
For the record:
We have also survived 2 other major disasters in California.
We moved to LA for one horrible year, 1994.
The Calabasas/Malibu fire started in our neighborhood. (3 died.)
Three months later we found ourselves only 5 miles from the epicenter of
the devastating 6.8 Northridge Earthquake. (72 died.)
Six months after that our house was robbed.
Someday I will write about those disasters, also.
And you wonder why we left "sunny" California to live on the east
coast?
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This is my neighbor, Toadsly. He lives in the hosta by my front door.
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