More than 1,000 residents in the Mission Hills area were evacuated as a brush fire scorched hundreds of acres on June 29.
According to Santa Barbara County Fire Department Public Information Officer Dave Zaniboni, the department responded to a call of a fire near 1550 Burton Mesa Blvd. at 1:16 p.m. Fire crews from Lompoc were also sent to help fight the blaze.
By that time, several dozen acres had burned, and the fire was spreading rapidly. A large mushroom cloud-shaped plume of smoke was visible from a distance. Police set up a roadblock at the corner of Burton Mesa and Rucker, directing traffic away from the fire.
Zaniboni said at least 1,200 people were affected by the evacuation.
Several residents gathered in the parking lot of the Mission Hills Market to watch fire aircrews dump red retardant on the fire. One resident, 60-year-old Robert Brandt, evacuated his home on Via Lato Road, taking his dog and anything else he could grab.
“We just had a few minutes to grab everything,” Brandt said, as he stood in the parking lot with a pair of binoculars and a handheld CB radio. “So we grabbed what we could, and I grabbed my dog and we left.”
The exact time or the cause of the fire hadn’t been determined by press time on June 30, according to Zaniboni, but Brandt told the Sun that he remembers seeing a small column of black smoke sometime after noon.
By that afternoon, the fire swelled to about 200 acres and patches of red retardant could be seen across the tree line. By Tuesday morning, June 30, Zaniboni said the fire had scored at least 300 acres and was 75 percent contained.
Fire crews responded with at least four air tankers, two helicopters, four bulldozers, and 24 engines with around 120 personnel, Zaniboni said, adding that no homes were damaged and no injuries were reported.
As the fire was being contained on Tuesday morning, parts of the evacuation were lifted, according to an alert issued by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.
This article appears in Jul 2-9, 2015.
