night report

The weather has gotten much cooler tonight, which is very good for us. The Riviera, which we can see from upstairs in our house, is charred but no longer emitting billowing flames or plumes of smoke, and it seems that the most active parts of the fire are further away. So the visual indicators available to us are positive. The firefighting team hasn't given a containment estimate though, and the area is on the same level of fire watch as last night. We're still packed and ready to go, but a little more confident in the face of it.

So much for us. The sad news is that there has been a lot of damage elsewhere, and there's still a lot of work to be done to control it. The fire broke out in Montecito near to Westmont College, which is where we sometimes play ultimate frisbee on the weekend. Several parts of that campus were destroyed but others survived. Students and faculty gathered in the fire-proof gym building while firefighters fought the blaze, and were able to leave this morning. That area is in the mandatory evacuation zone and is off-limits to the public while that is in effect. My graduate advisor lives in the hills by Mission Canyon (up the mountain beyond the Santa Barbara Mission), in an area that was completely devastated. He and his wife were out of town - so on the one hand they are safe, but on the other hand everything in their home was lost.

This fire was in a much more populated area than the others that have broken out in the Santa Barbara region in the last year and a half. Where the others caused damage to National Forest and agricultural areas, this time around many people lost their homes - not least because the chaparral in those parts hadn't burned in about 50 years (fires are a natural part of the California ecosystems, but they're usually supressed when areas are developed, which causes tinder like plant material to build up increasing the overall fire risk and leading to bigger fires in the end). It will be interesting watching the town regroup after this. Of course, we're not out of the woods yet (to put a great cliché into the mix). It'll be a few days at least until we're in a position to survey the damage and figure out the next steps.

For the time being, we're being vigilant, although we did venture out to State Street to get dinner this evening. The bags remain packed by the door, while the helicopters continue to fly overhead. We'll update again tomorrow.