Friday morning began with nearly 30,000 South Coast residents finding themselves refugees in their own town, forced to flee by a fickle fire that sucker punched fire fighters by heading west Thursday evening when they expected it to push south and east.
As of this writing, it appears, the fire jumped Highway 192 and Highway 154 last night, but only in spots. Firefighters quickly pounced on those fire jumps last night and successfully kept them from spreading.
To the west, new mandatory evacuation orders were issued last night to all residents living east of Patterson Avenue in Goleta and North of Highway 101.
To the east, the mandatory evacuation zone now extends along Hot Springs Road-north of Sycamore Canyon and East Valley, all the way up to East Camino Cielo Road. The eastern flank of the fire runs down from El Cielito along Gibraltar.
More current information will be posted after the Incident Command’s 8:00 a.m. press conference.