Approaching storm eases California evacuation order
But rains pose risk of a flow of debris from mountainous areas
GOLETA, CALIF.— Most of the thousands of people who fled a raging California wildfire in the mountains north of Santa Barbara were told they could return home Tuesday as an approaching storm offered hope the flames would be doused.
About 4,000 of the nearly 5,500 evacuees were affected when authorities reduced the size of the evacuation zone.
The blaze had blackened more than 16 square kilometres of the rugged Santa Ynez Mountains, but most of that acreage was scorched in its first hours Monday.
Fire commanders described a fierce battle that saved homes as the blaze consumed brush in an area that hadn’t burned in 29 years.
“We’ve had winds move up slope, down slope, across the slope,” Santa Barbara County fire Battalion Chief Anthony Stornetta said.
A 1990 wildfire in the same area destroyed more than 400 homes.
“It’s just a hard, difficult piece of country to fight fire in and the weather is the most extreme anywhere around,” said Jim Harris, Los Padres National Forest fire chief.
Rudy Gruber, 79, watched the smoke and flames from the top of a hill near his house in Santa Barbara.
Despite orders to evacuate, he said he decided not to leave because he didn’t think the fire would cross a canyon to his home. Plus, it’d be tough to move his 50-pound tortoise, Amstel.
Even so, he’s been prepared for about a year, packing photo albums, computers and a carrier for his cat, Scooter.
Helicopters dropped water on the fire during the night, and daylight allowed air tankers to drop long strips of fire retardant to box in the flames.
The fire began in Los Padres National Forest as winds gusted to at least 50 kilometres per hour.
Fire officials said as much as an inch of rain was expected to hit the area by midnight. The possible arrival of rain also posed hazards, ranging from shifting winds to debris flows from steep mountainsides. In January 2018, a downpour on burned slopes just east of Santa Barbara unleashed massive debris flows that devastated Montecito, killing 23 people and destroying homes.