firewatch

A red smoky morning in Santa Barbara. The fire authorities are not talking about containment yet, so we're staying at home next to the radio, just in case we're put on evacuation watch. Today the most striking visual is smoke whereas last night the flames were scarily large and visible from our skylight. There's also a light descent of ash. We're staying indoors because the air outside is very smoky - indoors we're fine. Other than that, the car is outside and the valuables are packed, just in case. For the time being the mandatory evacuation order stands about 5 miles to the east of us, and evacuation watch extends to an area that ends 8 blocks away. Now that it's morning the wind has decreased considerably, which bodes well for firefighting along the perimeter. They expect the weather to be somewhat calm today, but these things are pretty unpredictable. Because of the drought we've had this season the city has asked residents to minimize the use of water so they crews have as much as possible.

Whichever way things go, we're ready. We think it'll just be a day of waiting by the radio. Either the weather will be favorable today and we'll have some containment this evening, or things will be in limbo (pardon the terrible fire pun) during the day and this evening we'll be packing the car and heading north. We've got some friends in Goleta and elsewhere further away who have been checking in on us and offered refuge :) But if things really heat up (I'm apparently at the point where I can make jokes about this) we'll probably just go all the way up to Palo Alto.

Map of the fire
(to find our house relative to what's going on, zoom in and look for Castillo Street - it's to the left of the action):

View Larger Map


Information
The Montecito Fire District page:
http://www.montecitofire.com/index.htm

The SB county dedicated page:
http://www.countyofsb.org/ceo/oes0.aspx?id=2332

The SB Independent (constant updates):
http://www.independent.com/