New evacuation orders were issued in Santa Barbara County on Saturday as the Thomas fire took aim at the hills above Montecito, with some wind gusts reported up to 65 mph.
The so-called sundowner winds are pushing south from the mountains down to the coast — removing moisture along the way — and are expected to present firefighters in Santa Barbara County with their biggest challenge since the Thomas fire roared back to life a week ago, officials said.
“When the sundowners surface in that area and the fire starts running down slopes, you are not going to stop it,” Mark Brown, an operations section chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told reporters at a Saturday morning news briefing. “And we are not going to stand in front of it and put firefighters in untenable situations.”
A significant boost in the humidity overnight Friday did virtually nothing to help, fire behavior analyst Tim Chavez told firefighters.
“One of the other characteristics of the strong downslope winds is it rapidly and abruptly scours the marine layer out of the coastal plane,” Chavez said.
One fire commander told crews to “plan on getting your … kicked” Saturday.
A portion of the northbound 101 Freeway into Santa Barbara was closed to traffic as evacuation orders were expanded in areas in and around Montecito and Summerland. About 1,600 Santa Barbara County residents are under mandatory evacuation orders, while 34,000 residents in the fire zone remain under voluntary evacuation.
Small platoons of fire trucks awaited orders with their engines running in the parking lots of public schools, churches and other designated safety zones. Several fire engines were also sent up to the historic San Ysidro Ranch to protect structures.
National Weather Service. The wind event should last until about 6 p.m. Saturday and then gradually subside in Santa Barbara County, he said.
Late Saturday afternoon, firefighters in Montecito took advantage when winds died to stop the flames from advancing closer to multimillion dollar homes along East Mountain Drive. Firefighters were spread out along the narrow streets and sprayed water over brush and trees considered “hot spots,” as rocks and boulders tumbled down the mountain.
David Silva, a firefighter with the San Bernardino Fire Department, pointed to the green brush behind him that hadn’t yet burned as members of his crew sprayed water onto burning embers. He said he is worried about the winds picking up Saturday night.
“The crazy weather makes it difficult to predict where the fire is going,” he said. “We will be here all night.”
He said helicopters and airplanes didn’t have a chance Saturday to dump fire retardant or water in the area because of low visibility and unpredictable wind.
“We were hoping it’d be over by Christmas,” he said of the fire, “but now it looks like we will be here a while.”
On Saturday evening fire crews are expected to shift their focus to Ventura County, where the northern edge of the fire is moving east and red flag conditions are expected to remain in place until Sunday night, officials said. Winds could gust up to 55 mph.
The Thomas fire is now the third largest fire in California’s history since accurate recording began in 1932. The wildfire, which started in Ventura County on Dec. 4, had scorched 259,000 acres as of Saturday morning.
The westernmost edge of the giant Thomas fire was in the north-south canyon drained by San Ysidro Creek. An army of firefighters was trying to keep the fire away from homes.
While containment was at 40%, officials said the northwestern edge of the massive inferno was still very dangerous.
Firefighters have smothered the hills with hundreds of thousands of gallons of fire retardant in an attempt to keep embers from igniting spot fires and to keep flames at bay, Brown said. Some hillsides have been intentionally denuded above Montecito, Summerland and Carpinteria, including in Romero and Toro canyons, to limit the potential damage.
Authorities were most concerned about flames around San Ysidro Creek, he said. There was a limit to how much flammable vegetation could be burned in a controlled manner before the fire arrived at the canyon.
It would have been too risky to attempt a controlled burn there during days of stubborn winds because that fire would sprinkle dangerous embers throughout the communities to the south and west, Brown said.
There are hundreds of homes in the fire’s potential path, and with winds that strong, it’s too dangerous to put firefighters in front of it to stop it. They would have to watch the fire pass by from designated “safety zones” then attack it from behind.
Friday was the 12th consecutive day of red flag fire warnings — the longest sustained period of fire weather warnings on record.
“We put out plenty of red flag warnings, but we haven’t seen them out 12 days in a row. That’s unusual,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Curt Kaplan. “This has been the longest duration event that we have had a red flag warning out without any breaks.”
Red flag warnings were instituted by the weather service in 2004 and are intended to alert fire agencies to hot, dry and windy conditions that foster wildfires.