Montecito’s misery: Ash rains in wildfire battle
MONTECITO: Ash rained down on Saturday on the dry hills and multimillion-dollar homes of Montecito, where firefighters chased spot blazes fanned by winds in one of California’s largest wildfires in decades.
The fire, named “Thomas”, broke out almost two weeks ago and is now the state’s third-largest wildfire since 1932.
On Saturday, it led to evacuation orders for areas in Santa Barbara County, including Montecito more than 80 kilometres northwest of Los Angeles along the Pacific coast.
“Fire made an aggressive southward push into the community of Montecito, impacting some structures there,” the state’s fire service, Cal Fire, said on its website.
The hills of Montecito are normally a tranquil, lightly-populated refuge for celebrities and the wealthy.
Most had fled the semi-rural zone on Saturday as smoke hung over the district’s palm trees, and ash sometimes fell.
With the district largely deserted, fire trucks moved without sirens and were stationed at every home in a bid to save them, a photographer said.
Some firefighters marched in blue helmets, with hand tools over their shoulders and strapped to their backs, to attack hotspots that frequently ignite from embers blown by the winds.
Almost 8,500 firefighters assisted by 34 helicopters are attacking the Thomas fire, which sprawls for miles.
Santa Barbara’s Office of Emergency Management announced a series of mandatory evacuation orders as well as voluntary evacuation warnings for parts of the county on its Twitter account.
The OEM said the county website shut down “due to extreme traffic.”
There have been a series of fires in California this month, most of which have since been contained.