Is Santa Barbara County Prepared for the Next Big Fire?

County Holds Public Meeting to Address Disaster Readiness and Protocols

Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig cautioned residents not to look to the fire department to fix all problems. In a wind-driven wildfire, “We can’t possibly get to all of you when we need to,” he said, advising residents to take personal responsibility to be prepared. | Credit: Courtesy

Are Santa Barbara fire departments ready if a fast-moving conflagration like the burnovers in Los Angeles take place? At least 29 people lost their lives and nearly 17,000 structures were destroyed down south — a disaster that many Santa Barbarans worry will happen here. On January 28, Supervisor Laura Capps convened a Zoom meeting with Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig to provide answers to the flood of questions that have inundated their offices.

The information heard by the 150 people tuning in might not have been what they expected, or wanted, to hear.

Chief Hartwig emphasized that it was residents who needed to take personal responsibility in preparing for fire and evacuating when they felt unsafe. “What I know, from 30 years of experience fighting fires, is that all of us believe what happened in Pacific Palisades and Altadena can happen here,” the chief said. The wind-driven fires quickly grew beyond the capacity of the Los Angeles crews on hand — here, the county has 16 fire stations, and the City of Santa Barbara has eight.

“We will be where we need to be,” Hartwig said of local fire crews, “but we can’t possibly get to all of you when we need to.”

Chief Chris Mailes of Santa Barbara City Fire added a caveat for frightened residents faced with immediate evacuation: Do a 360 of your home before you drive off. Firefighters in Los Angeles found many had fled leaving doors and windows wide open, inviting fire inside. “Close windows and doors, remove combustibles like patio furniture away from the home,” Mailes advised.

The place to find answers to most all of the requests made Tuesday night is in the California-wide residential prep program “Ready, Set, Go.” Captain Scott Safechuck, a spokesperson for County Fire, said the pamphlet is available in English and Spanish at every fire station and at the County Fire website. “All these concerns can be addressed by reading the ‘Ready, Set, Go’ brochure,” he said, “It tells you how to set up your own personal action plan, the things you need to accomplish before a fire.” The booklet describes in less than a dozen pages how to create low-fire zones around a house, suggests “home hardening” methods to deter fire from creeping inside, and provides lists to help organize family members, irreplaceable papers, medications, and other essentials before you need to flee. And, if you’re trapped in a home by fire, “Ready, Set, Go” has information on the things you can do.

Photo taken the morning the Palisades Fire ignited. | Credit: Grigory Heaton/WikiCommons

Readiness

For many years, a wildland solution has been plotted by local fire departments, all of which have an engrained experience with wildfire in Santa Barbara. Firefighters, helicopter pilots, bulldozer drivers, and chiefs throughout county and city fire departments have worked on the humongous Thomas Fire in 2017 on back through Gap, Zaca, Whittier, Jesusita, Tea — and with institutional knowledge through to the Sycamore and Coyote fires in the ‘70s and ‘60s. All of them took place during hair-raising Sundowners in Santa Barbara’s steep, treacherous, mountain terrain, where winds can rise and whip a fire in a different direction in an instant.

Chief Mailes, who grew up in Santa Barbara, said his first big fire was Sycamore in 1977 — which burned the same ground as the Coyote Fire in 1964, Tea Fire in 2008, and Thomas Fire in 2017. “For our community, it was the first major fire to impact houses and burn well down into the City of Santa Barbara,” Mailes recalled of Sycamore, which torched 234 homes as far as Alameda Padre Serra and nearly to today’s roundabout at Salinas Street before the winds shifted.

Over the years, County Fire has added helicopters and bulldozers, and tripled the number of hand crews, said Anthony Stornetta, chief of operations for the agency. When engine companies go out to inspect about 17,000 properties throughout the summer for defensible space, they’re also assessing tight spaces like narrow roads and driveways, locating gas and water lines and connections.

Hartwig recalled the first time he saw the county’s new Firehawk helicopter fly a mission, the Patera Fire in 2022, which was moving downhill, pushed by a blustery wind in Goleta: “The Firehawk kept a fire of easily 1,500 acres down to 15 acres. We saw the effect of big water very quickly.” By “big water,” Hartwig was referring to the Firehawk’s ability to carry 900 gallons of water, compared to older helicopters’ 250 gallons. It’s also quicker and able to fly during heavy winds. It made a believer out of him, said Hartwig, despite the $10 million cost to purchase a “gently” used aircraft and retrofit it for fire and rescue work.

Red Flag Warning Days

Every major fire in Santa Barbara County within memory has flared during “Red Flag Warning” conditions, or an evening when strong, dry winds blast down from the mountains while the vegetation on the ground is crispy. Anthony Stornetta explained the warnings originate with the National Weather Service, working with the fire chiefs, about 24 or 48 hours before the wind event. In a few areas along the South Coast — Mission Canyon, San Antonio Creek, and Refugio Road — fire companies prohibit parking to keep the narrow roads clear of vehicles.

Photo of the aftermath of the Holiday Fire | Credit: Paul Wellman

Roadways

One of the first things fire managers do when they get a call is model where the fire is going and who could be hit, said Hartwig. While firefighters battle the fire, law enforcement works to get people out of the way. They all know how narrow the old roads are in the Santa Barbara hills. Even under low traffic conditions, it’s hard to get big fire engines in and out, Hartwig said.

Supervisor Capps noted that even in places like Isla Vista, by the ocean but dense with cars, residents worry about getting out. Hartwig had a number of comments about telling Isla Vista residents to: know the different routes away from your home; be patient if a large-scale evacuation happens suddenly; be aware of the gridlock times in certain areas; don’t wait to be told to evacuate (especially during Sundowner winds); and stay in contact with your neighbors and weather conditions.

As for construction on the roads, “improvements that require construction are a real pain,” Hartwig acknowledged. They can’t be sped up, he said, but Caltrans and other contractors use K-rails because they can be moved to widen the roadway during an evacuation.

Water

Water is an issue because it’s finite, Hartwig observed, and hydrants are placed to fight structure fires. “In a vegetation fire, we assume we’re going to need water,” he said. “We bring our water with us for a vegetation fire.” Hartwig explained how the fire crew attacks the sides of a fire with hand tools, while a water truck comes in with pumps and hoses to keep the fire down.

Hartwig added, “As Anthony said, we’re in the business of putting ourselves in danger between the fire and the homes, but we don’t do a suicide mission. We bring our water with us.”

Public Safety Power Shutoffs

Of the Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) used by electric companies to tamp down the possibility that their wires cause a wildfire, Hartwig took some of the blame, saying fire departments had recognized long ago that downed power lines start fires. “We went to the utility companies and said ‘fix it.’ They came up with the PSPS program.”

It wasn’t a perfect solution, sometimes deenergizing areas predicted to have heavy winds that didn’t materialize, he said, as in the Camino Cielo area recently. Speaking sympathetically of the problems of losing a land line or a functioning water pump, Hartwig hewed to safety. “You’ll have to assume you’ll be without power during a red flag,” he said. “The alternative is to not deenergize and for the wind to start a fire. The catastrophe associated with that is nothing any of us desire.”

Vegetation

Hartwig could be heard rustling papers as he described how County Fire gets phone calls daily for defensible space inspections or questions about private land. Like the city, residents receive citations if they haven’t cleared appropriately. Both departments are also doing large fuels reduction work, using grazing sheep or goats at times. Controlled burns were another method to create good defensible space around a community and allowed the fire department to pick a time when a small amount of smoke could be absorbed into the atmosphere.

Asked about work to clear trees growing in a creek bed, Hartwig acknowledged they had to respect bird nesting season and aquatic spawning times. Sensitive areas do need an environmental study, he said, but the criteria of life safety could make that easier. In the Montecito area, he said the Montecito Fire Protection District allocated a lot of resources to that and should be contacted.

A question came about all the eucalyptus trees at the Ellwood Butterfly Preserve and whether they posed a hazard. “Most complaints relate to eucalyptus trees that haven’t been trimmed,” Hartwig said, where Goleta had a major grant and permission from the Coastal Commission to thin out and trim up the trees, and remove the undergrowth. Stornetta added that it was ladder fuels beneath a tree that were the main concern, or the vegetation below that could catch fire and shoot sparks up into a tree.

Fire Safe Council and Firewise

Members of the Santa Barbara Fire Safe Council. | Credit: Courtesy

The Fire Safe Council might be the best-kept secret in Santa Barbara County. Set up 28 years ago, it comprises all the South County fire agencies, including the Forest Service, a number of homeowner groups, and Supervisor Joan Hartmann. They’ve recently jumped into the Firewise U.S.A. program, which organizes wildland communities to prepare homes and their surroundings against fire, dangling the carrot of slightly reduced fire insurance as each neighborhood works together to reduce fire risks.

“We help communities organize to identify risks and work on them over time,” said Anne-Marie Parkinson on Tuesday evening. She runs the Firewise program with a small staff for the S.B. Fire Safe Council. More than 23 groups reached Firewise status in the past three years, but they’ve had so many requests lately it could take a few weeks to get back to everyone, Parkinson said.

Hartwig, whose own neighborhood is part of the program and has advanced to the level of holding evacuation rehearsals using alternate routes, said the Fire Safe Council’s home hardening page was a handy one: “You just click a part of the house and it shows you tips.” (It’s under “How to Prepare.”)

Home hardening can be expensive, depending on what you modify, Parkinson said. But their team does home visits, makes recommendations to mitigate fire dangers, and can come up with a plan for a home’s budget and needs.

“There’s no point to worrying about it. Get an expert in and evaluate it,” said Laura Capps.

The major value of the program was getting the community to work together and be engaged in fire prevention. “Once you’re engaged, it’s much easier to be engaged, to know what the risks are, what an evacuation plan is, what are the steps to take,” Parkinson said with the quick ease of many repetitions.

Her group freed the fire department to do more important tasks, she said, and the effort homeowners put in would pay off: “They can’t have a fire truck at every house. You have to work with your neighbors to be part of a wildland solution.”

Click here to watch a full video of the January 28 meeting.