What I do not see reassures me. No flashing lights, no cop cars. A postal truck is parked a few meters away with its passenger door open. A second knocks rattles the door and I duck. I return to the bedroom and hold my breath as if it could give me away. From my bed I peek behind the blinds that are not fully extended. An engine turns over and a few seconds later the postal truck exits the scene. Five minutes elapse before I dare to open the door gingerly.
Not a soul stirs.
Early afternoon on Thursday and the thermometer has hit a stifling 37 degrees. Again. With all windows open it swelters inside. I should close them to keep out the ash that manages to sneak in through the screens but I would suffocate. No one in the army of gardeners that tend to the flowers, trees and shrubs on my landlady’s property is here. The construction workers who need to put finishing touches to the new house next door have not shown up either. The birds have gone, too. The stillness and the oppressive heat have snuffed all sign of life except for me and two neighbors. We should not be here. The knock on the door scared me.
Optimism filled the air at first. Two days ago gusty winds descended from the Santa Ynez mountains on a Cinco de Mayo afternoon creating havoc with the laundry I had left outside to dry. Bed sheets collapsed onto the herb garden and messed up the prized arrangement. I was at my desk when I inhaled the first hint of trouble. I walked outside to investigate the source of the acrid smell when the front door slammed shut in response to a hostile wind, a violence that sent a delicate painted Polish egg crashing to the floor.
A huge plume of yellowish smoke oozed over the foothills of Santa Barbara.
Memories of last November’s Tea Fire surge forward. The scent of fiery destruction permeates the air. Authorities activate emergency operations immediately. The fire is christened Jesusita after its origin on the trail of the same name. I am very familiar with it, having hiked it countless times from either of its San Roque or Mission Canyon trailheads.
Someone in them hills must have done a good job because as fast as the smoke invaded our skies it disappeared without a trace.
The day began on Wednesday with blue skies, a peaceful landscape interrupted only by the whirring of helicopters on dozens of missions that take them directly over the house. 
An intense midday heat settles over Santa Barbara. After work at The Channels on the cooler ocean side campus of City College I am confronted with an enormous dark cloud that cloaks the entire city, more ominous and more threatening than 24 hours ago. Residents stand befuddled on street corners and on lawns. Drivers are stuck in rush hour jams caused by gawkers and a power outage that shut down traffic lights. Hot sundowner winds fan flames and push ashes over the city on their journey from the ridge tops.
Shortly after 19h00 a sheriff's deputy drives up my street, intermittent siren screeching. I recognize the car that I feared would pull me over for a rolling stop when I was making my way home a few minutes back. "A mandatory evacuation has been ordered," he says to my neighbors who have gathered on the sidewalk. Repeating the Tea Fire evacuation pattern Elisabeth and I ready a couple of bags with a change of clothes and a few valuables. Neighbors assume the same preparations. I help one strap a kayak to the roof of her car.
Flames scorch the foothills and are visible from the In'N Out Burger in Goleta, now an official stop on my evacuation route. My nose leads me to a dozen or so firefighters on a dinner break, their faces caked with soot and their clothes reeking of wood smoke. With a glass of water I toast the young crew who came from Fulton, a town I have never heard of that is four and a half hours away, to bail our ass from the third wildfire in 18 months.
It was true during the Tea Fire and the Gap Fire before that. I surmise that it holds true in the majority of wildland fires that lap at the urban interface, the strip of land where city and woodland mix. Residents of the upper reaches of our local canyons also inhabit the upper reaches of our society. Some exceptions are certain to exist, mainly in the residents who occupy older homes. Their longevity predates the frenzied real estate speculation of the last quarter century that has turned every desirable community into playgrounds for the affluent.
The homes that dot the canyons and hillsides of the Santa Barbara frontcountry inhabit a chaparral landscape that depends on periodic fires for regeneration. In the last 40 years the breadth of south-facing slopes of the Santa Ynez mountains has burned. The three major conflagrations of the last year and a half accelerate an entrenched cycle. The increased frequency imposes new devastation but we may not feign surprise even if the Jesusita FIre struck at the beginning of the fire season and not its end. These events are not occasional or isolated: they are almost predictable. Defensible space freed up by brush clearing around dwellings will not save us from ourselves. We flirt with destruction when we build homes in remote areas of difficult access. They will be thanked profusely. They will be called heroes. The moral choice would be to refuse building permits that guarantee future perils to firefighters.
And staggering costs. Unlike urban blazes that strike structures with equal randomness, wildland fires affect mostly upscale enclaves. The whole of society picks up the tab - $17 million for the Jesusita Fire. The rallying cry of political expediency demands that taxpayer money not be directed toward individual benefit. I am not advocating a return to private fire protection, a dangerous trend that is already under way, regrettably. Neither must we permit a public agency to reinvent itself as the protector of private privilege. The U.S Forest Service, the agency that manages lands where most wildland fires occur, chokes under the burden of fire suppression that consumes about half of its budget, up from 20 percent at the turn of the century. Private support businesses already treat fires as a cash crop. Sixty percent of the funds pay for anything from catering and portable toilets to helicopters that douse water and planes that drop fire retardant. Most of the large aircrafts deployed to fight the Jesusita Fire - including the DC 10 Super Tanker that showed up on Friday - belong to private corporations, the public information officer for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department told me.
With impeccable timing television commercials supportive of a ballot proposition that promised continued funding to fire fighting departments filled the airwaves at the same time the Jesusita Fire filled the sky. Notwithstanding a dire economic outlook, it was crushed by the sliver of California voters who turned out to engage in the special election’s illusion of participatory democracy. More than 65 percent thrashed the complex arguments presented in a 65-page information guide. Fiscal probity, however, remains on the agenda in a state that postured as the world’s fifth economy when it chose its latest Governor but which teeters closer to a bankrupt future with each passing minute.
The notion of increased reliance on inmates to fight fires must have crossed someone's mind. A CalFire representative in Sacramento assured me that demand for the program that pays prisoners $1 a day and knocks a day off their sentence for each day on fire lines has not grown in the last five years. At its peak, 88 inmates joined other fire crews in the hills above Santa Barbara to battle the Jesusita Fire. A modest participation but one with an enormous growth potential and a captive population: about a quarter million people languish in California's prisons and jails. The temptation to solve budget impasses with cheap inmate labor, dissolute and flawed, will seduce politicians and the public nevertheless. Will residents be as prompt to put up banners to thank prisoners for saving their homes?
Foothills of Santa Ynez Mountains frontcountry after Tea Fire.
Rattlesnake Canyon (lower) after Tea Fire.
View of the Santa Ynez Mountains' Mission/Rattlesnake canyons divide in Santa Barbara.
The Gap, Tea and Jesusita fires have bought Santa Barbara and Goleta some peace although pockets of untouched vegetation remain. Montecito has only partially burned; Summerland and Carpinteria have not burned at all. Careful...
Judy reprises her role already rehearsed during the Tea Fire and welcomes a pair of refugees. I receive four reverse 911 calls that evening and night. Unlike last November when the mandatory evacuation for my Riviera neighborhood lasted a single day, authorities do not lift the order come morning. Instead they extend it to cover a 15 1/2 kilometer strip from Patterson Avenue in Goleta to Hot Springs Road in Montecito.
We cannot go home.
Maybe it is because I slept uneasily on the floor and I miss the simple comfort of my bed. Maybe it is because I chose to echo the "cautious optimism" declared during the morning press conference. Maybe it is because news reports say the fire has spread westward from San Roque Canyon and eastward from Mission Canyon, a development that spares the Riviera from immediate danger.
I resolve to go home.
Problem is that every intersection that borders the mandatory evacuation zone is barricaded. Pairs of police officers man checkpoints to prevent access. I stumble upon a San Luis Obispo cop who agrees to let me in after verifying my local address. The five blocks from the checkpoint to my house are quieter than on a Sunday. I do not see a single person on the street. All the houses seem unoccupied. Only a few despondent cars remain. There is no traffic whatsoever. My own street is dead. The air inside the house suffocates me. I quickly open the windows and draw the blinds down. The parched parsley, mint, oregano, dill and thyme hung on valiantly in the brittle, dried earth.
Abandoned.
The knock of the mail carrier worried me. I feared a cop from the many agencies that have responded to the call for mutual aid was behind the door with a lecture - or worse - about the merits of mandatory evacuation orders.
Without any hesitation I support orders to evacuate homes in the path of the fire. Because to second guess the behavior of a wind-driven conflagration is to court disaster, the evacuation zone needs to err on the side of caution. It is also vital to keep streets in the fire zone free of traffic and even arteries leading to it.
Even with these considerations I wonder whether a mandatory evacuation order that covered 18 square kilometers and displaced 30,500 people was simply cautionary or whether it overreached. (An evacuation warning covered an additional 29,000 people and reached to the edge of downtown.) The news story vernacular is that these people (me!) live in "threatened" homes, an assertion that I dispute.
One of the mandatory evacuation zone boundaries was reported as being (Upper) State Street but it in fact excluded the commercial properties on that commercial thoroughfare. If access and safety inform the decision to evacuate, why allow businesses to remain open smack against the edge of the evacuation zone?
Roughly 800 people stayed at the two shelters set up by the Red Cross, which estimated it was prepared to provide food and shelter for 2,300 people. A commendable effort but one that assists only a fraction of the 30,500 people who have been evacuated.
These official figures use a formula of 2.5 residents per evacuated parcel. It may be a fair average in detached homes but many more cram in apartments. The figures also imply 100 percent compliance that was likely the first night but that became less and less so as the evacuation stretched. If 30,500 people have left their homes and only a fraction stayed at the two shelters, where did the others go? Friends came in handy, as Judy did for Elisabeth and me. Some slept in their cars parked in big-store lots. Others checked themselves into hotels that quickly reached capacity in a city with a 73 percent average occupancy rate for May, according to the Santa Barbara Conference and Visitors Bureau. A friend found a room only in Ventura, 50 kilometers away. In an article the publisher of the Daily Sound gripes about his "$120-plus" hotel room. After one night he retreated to free shelter at a friend’s – but his car collected a ticket. Mandatory evacuation or not, rules are rules.
Because relocating so many people in hotels and motels represents a significant financial burden, the decision to evacuate homes needs to be tailored with care. There is also a virtue in a careful assessment of danger so that evacuated residents do not dismiss the next request to leave. The phrase mandatory evacuation is seriously misleading. A person cannot be forced to leave their home in California, a disaster preparedness official told me. Like so many aspect of life in this country, the descriptive anticipates future lawsuits. No one has to leave (although in warped democratic fashion renters have fewer rights than homeowners) but should something happen, you had been warned.
The news media do not dwell in these somber shades of definitions. I imagine that it might be delicate to question officials while an emergency is in progress. Granted. It remains that the role of the news media is to inform – and dare I say question - not simply repeat what is said. In continuous broadcast and online coverage, surely there was time for a discussion about terminology and reason for such an expansive evacuation area. It is not about second guessing officials, but about understanding how decisions are reached.
The aftermath of the fire lacks analysis even when a story begs for it. A Daily Sound article revealed that a city councilor scored a ride from law enforcement to visit a friend within the evacuation zone during the fire. The sheriff denies that he authorized it. He points out that officers have some discretion in who they allow back in. The mayoral candidate declined to state whether she identified herself and thus received preferential treatment.
The writer did not question why the friend who needed food had ignored the order to leave, which would have presented an opportunity to inform readers of our modern interpretation of the term mandatory.
I spent Thursday afternoon at home walking barefeet on the tiles of the living room floor and getting my feet blackened by ash. To my great joy the herb garden responded to watering in no time.
Three of us are left on the street. Like a criminal on the run, a neighbor shared her circuitous route back home to avoid the road blocks. The streets are empty of life. I find myself adopting an under siege mentality. In the deafening quiet that envelops me, every new sound is suspicious. Unsure of my ability to remain home I treat the possibility of intrusion into my restricted space with alarm. I am intensely aware of residing in a roped off area, cordoned off from the rest of the city where I imagine business to go on as usual. I can move about within my expansive cage but I cannot get too close to the edges of freedom.
A trip to the grocery story is in order but I do not know whether my drivers license will buy me entry back into the evacuated area. Unable to pick up Elisabeth at work I ask that she makes her way on foot to the barricade where I will meet her. She gets a ride from a friend who finds a permissive police officer who clears them to proceed past the checkpoint.
We watch constant television coverage of the fire. As night settles over the city reports come in that the fire has jumped San Marcos Pass Road and Gibraltar Road. The blaze's two fronts have moved away from its origin, the area closest to our home. The helicopter flights now come at a different angle. Their path confirms the new center of activity.
A full moon breaks out from the smoke, forlorn in its intensity over a darkened Riviera. Other than my two neighbors and their discrete lights, I cannot spot any other home where someone might be inside preparing dinner, watching television.
The next morning Elisabeth manages to walk out of the Forbidden City into the free world without a problem. The barricades still block the streets but officers have left. Twenty four hours into my exile, the urban stimulation of Espresso Roma on State Street satisfies my desire for human interaction. Two Ventura County sheriff’s deputies relax under a patio umbrella. I sink into a simulated leather armchair with my crème de menthe Italian soda and turkey sandwich. Frankie Valli’s word tumble from the speaker above my head.
“I need you, baby, to warm the lonely night.
I love you, baby, trust in me when I say:
Oh pretty, baby don't bring me down I pray,
Oh pretty baby, now that I've found you,
Stay and let me love you, baby, let me love you.”
The fire seems to dwell in another dimension, a victim of an attention span that yearns for an escape from continuous coverage. I decide to seize the opportunity afforded by the unmanned checkpoints to shop for food and smuggle it back home before it spoils. The rhythm of easy life behind the barricades tempts me into complacency. I whiz around the unguarded road closures with the ease of someone who has integrated this setback into normal existence. A little too soon to let guards down because I am not permitted entry when I return from picking Elisabeth who worked a late shift on Friday. Two officers welcome no room for discussion and claim they will not "give a second chance" anymore.
I drive past one checkpoint after another. Cops staff every single intersection once again. I wonder whether the first cops might radio their colleagues that someone in a white Toyota is attempting to gain access. At the closest barricade to my home two officers caution that they can only let me in to retrieve needed items to spend the night somewhere else. They allow me to drive in after first suggesting I walk home, a consideration that immediately opens the door to a discussion of the odds of staying home without them coming to arrest us.
I noticed perhaps twice as many parked cars as the previous night. More rooms had lights inside. We get home at 23h00 and agree that ... we packed our bags (left my the door) and were ready to drive off (doors of the car left unlocked) after making phone calls to friends who did not pick up because of the late hour ... one who did had no room and we wondered where the Red Cross shelter (that might be full) was. We turned the tv on for information and time grew late and we fell asleep.
Cathedral, La Cumbre peaks (top), Mission Canyon's Rock Garden (middle), Mission Ridge and East Fork (bottom) after Jesusita Fire.
A low fog blanketed Santa Barbara on Saturday morning. A faint drizzle soaks the ash layer on my car into a black gunk. The gloomy layer reached the foothills, its northward progress blocked by the mountains. Unpredicted by meteorologists, the wet blanket dampened the fire's enthusiasm enough that by mid afternoon the evacuation order for the Riviera was downgraded to an evacuation warning and repopulation, as it was termed, proceeded. "You may be called to leave your home again," an official cautioned. I shrugged it off, certain that once home residents would not be so quick to flee once more even with a fire only 30 percent contained but with no direct threats.
In front of homes throughout the newly inhabited city, residents unloaded boxes and suitcases from their car, piling the cherished possessions hastily assembled three days ago in front of their home. It looked like a mass return from vacation.
The Jesusita Fire destroyed 80 homes and reduced 3,534 hectares of forest to a desperate landscape of scorched hillsides. A black earth plasters canyon walls once thick with chaparral. Except for a few remnants of charred plants the vegetation was obliterated. In Rattlesnake Canyon the riparian habitat flanking the stream escaped damage. Sycamores and oak trees stand tall, an improbable verdant ribbon of green against a flattened background.
The trails that are my home away from home have mostly disappeared. They trace a wispy outline, a scar on a wounded soul. Impossible to explore when impenetrable brush sealed off the hills, I hope that the Forest Service will capture this opportunity to designate new trails.
Fire investigators believe that the cause of the fire appears related to the use of power tools involved in vegetation clearance. A local volunteer group had performed brush clearing the day before the fire started and had been scheduled to work that Tuesday. The Forest Service does not maintain any of the frontcountry trails, and relies instead on the assistance of nonprofit groups. The announcement dominated the news when the press release went out but nothing has been heard since. I smell trouble.
Jesusita Fire aftermath: Mission Ridge and Rattlesnake Connector (1); (upper) Rattlesnake Canyon Trail and Gibraltar Road (2); Rattlesnake Canyon's Tin Can Meadow (3); Rattlesnake Canyon from Gibraltar Road (4) and fire trucks at Cold Spring Canyon's West Fork trailhead at Gibraltar Road (5).
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