Firefighters get a handle on Santa Barbara County blaze

But not before homes are lost to the disaster

GOLETA – Carrie Givens heard the ferocious winds pick up Friday night, went outside and saw the flames quickly approaching.

“I said, ‘We gotta get out of here,’” said Givens, 63.

She and her husband, John, corralled five cats, and she grabbed a change of clothes, her passport, computer, camera and a pastel painting she had started. She had to leave behind finished paintings, her late mother’s ashes and baby photos of her three children.

The couple fled, but the four-bedroom, split-level house they’d lived in for a quarter of a century, built into a hillside overlooking their 10-acre organic vegetable farm, quickly disappeared into the firestorm.

It was another weekend of terror and loss in Santa Barbara County, which has endured more than its share of calamity in recent months.

The Givens’ home was among several structures destroyed in the hills above Goleta on Friday night and Saturday morning when a record heat wave and dangerous winds combined to fuel the Holiday fire. No deaths or major injuries were reported, officials said.

It was the perhaps the most destructive of several blazes that broke out across Southern California amid oppressive heat that set temperature records for the day.

Santa Barbara has a long history of natural disaster, particularly brush fires. But the last year has been staggering.

In December, the Thomas fire, the largest on record in California, ripped through Montecito, Carpinteria and other coastal cities, destroying more than 1,000 structures. Then in January, mudslides in the same area killed 21 people and destroyed more than 100 homes. The mudslides alone resulted in property damage claims of more than $421 million.

The ever-present threats to homes and lives and the frightening evacuation alerts are becoming all too familiar, said Santa Barbara County Supervisor Janet Wolf, who lost her home during the Painted Cave fire of 1990. She’s had to evacuate twice since.

“Unfortunately it is an occurrence that we have become very used to,” she said. “But that doesn’t take away from the trauma and the fear that people experience.”

The situation Friday night was especially terrifying and fast developing, fire officials said. When the Holiday fire broke out after 8 p.m., the temperature in Goleta was still 100 degrees. Firefighters work to contain a structure fire as wildfire spreads along North Fairview Avenue in Goleta on Saturday.

Then the sundowner winds picked up, a scenario that over the decades

has spread many of Santa Barbara County’s most destructive fires.