Alisha Taff remembers the heat on Sunday afternoon and the horns from a U.S. Forest Service worker’s truck blaring her day into action as a wall of flames approached her home and property at Rock Front Ranch off Highway 166.
“It was crispy,” she said of the moment the Front Fire sprang to life a little after 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 19. The blaze began so suddenly that Taff didn’t even smell smoke or see flames before the Forest Service employee began laying on his horn, warning them of the fire rolling down the hill toward their front door step.
The Taffs sprang into action, guiding their 30 or so horses into a metal roofed barn to protect them from falling embers. The couple beds their animals in sand, and between that, and the barn roof, the animals were largely spared any trauma as firefighters quickly set up lines to contain and push the blaze back into the wilderness.
Taff said she and her husband opted not to evacuate due to the direction of the wind that day and the timely arrival of fire crews.
“We were just concerned about [the flames] crossing the [Cuyama] river bed and getting on the south side of the river,” she explained. Firefighters managed to hold the line however, and the blaze didn’t come any closer than about an eighth of a mile to the ranch.
As of the Sun‘s press time, the Front Fire had burned roughly 900 acres but was nearly 30 percent contained, according to a Los Padres National Forest spokesperson. Most of the burning is currently occuring in rural grassland and chaparral along the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo county line. And while that area is closed to the public, there are no active evacuations.
Highway 166 briefly closed the night of Aug. 19 but opened on Aug. 20, according to CalTrans. More than 600 firefighters with 35 engines, at least six helicopters, and five fixed-wing aircraft have thus far battled the blaze.
Taff said she heard what sounded like automatic gunfire in the minutes before receiving her evacuation warning on Aug. 19, and told the Sun that’s what she believed sparked the conflagration. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to authorities.
Despite the scorching scare over the past few days, Taff said she was already looking forward to what comes following any fire.
“It’s gonna rejuvenate that part of the environment, and that’s going to be a good thing,” she added. “This spring we should have some beautiful wildflowers if we get some rain.”
This article appears in Aug 23-30, 2018.