Noelle Berg and her husband evacuated from their Santa Ynez Valley home on their own accord as they saw helicopters drop retardant on the spreading Lake Fire, Berg told the Sun on July 8.
“We encouraged all of our friends to get out, but some of these people have said ‘We’re not leaving. Period,’” Berg said. “Seeing what’s happened in the past, we are more on the precautionary side of it.”
Berg and her husband evacuated from their Montecito home during the 2018 Thomas Fire and the following debris flow for three weeks each. After their experience facing natural disasters, the couple decided to buy a home “up the hill.” Now, her home on Ridge Road is sitting at the southernmost tip of an evacuation warning area for the Lake Fire—a blaze that’s consumed more than 26,000 acres and was 12 percent contained as of July 9. The blaze ignited on July 5, but the cause remains under investigation.
While she wasn’t required to leave, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office came by her neighborhood on July 7 to encourage people to evacuate, she said.
“We just felt that we’ve got the [Montecito] house, why wouldn’t we just go and get out of it if we’re already getting ash and smoke coming in?” Berg said. “Then yesterday morning [July 7], when we went back up, we were going to get more stuff, … it was dense with smoke.”
The Lake Fire started as a vegetation fire near Zaca Lake in Los Padres National Forest, northeast of Los Olivos, and spans across Lookout Mountain, Zaca Peak, the U.S. Forest Service’s Figueroa Station, and Junction Camp. InciWeb, a database that tracks wildfires, stated that the fire is projected to continue spreading southeast at high intensities because of the available brush and grass from heavy winter rains.
The U.S. Forest Service, Cal Fire, and Santa Barbara County Fire are leading an incident management team to suppress the fire and prevent it from spreading, particularly farther south toward residential areas, Los Padres Spokesperson Andrew Madsen told the Sun.
“The grass crop is at a historic level, and it’s been completely dried out,” Madsen said. “It’s like it’s been in the oven for a couple of weeks. Now that we have a heat wave here, it’s ready to go.”
The area sits very close to the 2007 Zaca Fire burn scar—a blaze that also started on the Fourth of July weekend, burned more than 240,000 acres, and destroyed two structures—but the scar has mostly grown back after 17 years and two years of heavy rain and minimal fire activity.
“It’s not going to run into an area that recently burned, and lay down,” Madsen said. “It’s an area where you don’t have an immediate threat to homes, except now it’s moving in a southeastern direction, and it could [go] toward the Santa Ynez Valley. We’re just trying to hold it in place until it’s active in an area where we can put firefighters on the line to go direct.”
The team’s dropped more than 400,000 gallons of fire retardant on the area—more than the Los Padres has used in the last two years due to minimal fire activity.
“It’s not surprising that you would see those retardant numbers jump up. This is typical across the Los Padres; we don’t have roads to drive our fire equipment up,” Madsen said. “The crews are used to hiking quite a distance; those crews are going into some of these more remote and inaccessible sections of the fire.”
As of July 9, the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management issued evacuation orders for the Woodstock and Goat Rock areas, the ranger station east of Goat Rock, areas south of Tunnel House at Sisquoc River, east of Figueroa Creak, north of the southern end of Cachuma Mountain, and west of Los Padres forest areas along with all areas from Figueroa Mountain Road at Junction Camp—including Tunnel Road—and all areas from Zaca Lake Road at Foxen Canyon Road north to the Sisquoc River. People are required to leave immediately.
The county issued evacuation warnings for areas east of Highway 154, north of Armour Ranch Road and Secretariate Street, west of Alisos Road, south of the Woodstock area, north and west of Calzada Avenue, east of E. Oak Trail Road, west of Happy Canyon, areas east of Figueroa Creek, north of Zaca Lake Road, Rancho Sisquoc, and north and south of the Los Padres entrance on Happy Canyon Road. Highway 154 is not within the evacuation warning areas and remained open as of July 9.
Residents in Los Olivos and surrounding areas received an air quality alert due to smoke and ash, and people are asked to stay indoors as much as possible and use an N-95 mask if residents must go outside. Animal Services is accepting cats and dogs at its Lompoc, Santa Maria, and Santa Barbara shelters, but livestock and horse owners will need to call (805) 698-0212 ahead of time to coordinate relocation and sheltering.
Visit readysbc.org to sign up for text alerts regarding evacuation notices and fire updates. The American Red Cross has opened an evacuation shelter at Solvang Veterans Memorial Hall (1745 Mission Dr.).
This article appears in Jul 11-21, 2024.
