Tom Fikes, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, lost a home but managed to escape along with his wife, Jerolyn, two teenage children, their pet hamster, two cats and the two kittens they were fostering for a nearby animal shelter.
They also managed to collect a prized guitar, but had to leave behind many other musical instruments and a handcrafted kayak that he and his son had spent hundreds of hours building out of blond mahogany. "That was a heartbreak," he said after touring the wreckage Friday morning. "I had hoped the garage would be there or the kayak would be sitting off to the side."
When he arrived at the ruins, firefighters were still dousing hot spots. One handed him a portion of a ceramic figurine made by one of his children. "It was a bit more emotional than I thought it would be," he said.
He was amazed at the randomness of the destruction. One healthy plant on the porch sat untouched next to others reduced to charcoal.
The campus-owned house where he had lived for a decade was all but gone. The house across the street was untouched. The hopscotch pattern repeated through the tight-knit community of faculty housing.
"Every house you saw standing was a relief because you know that family was spared. Every house down was devastating. The way the wind whipped around the fire was not unlike the way a tornado whips around," he said. "It's somewhat random."
Fikes also lost his office. Yet his nearby lab was unscathed.
The orderly evacuation of students came after repeated drills on campus, including a recent one that offered the chance of winning an iPod just for showing up at the gym. The campus of 1,300 students and 90 professors had developed a plan to keep students safely sheltered in the gym rather than letting them risk being overtaken by fire while driving down streets lined with tall eucalyptus and other highly flammable vegetation.
"The students did amazingly well," said Chris Call, a campus vice president who organized the crisis response, which included a three-day supply of food and water and a medical station. Officials showed two movies, "The Incredibles" and "Elf," to pass the time as fear devolved to boredom. By 2 a.m., some students were given the option of moving to San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara or to Reality Church in Carpinteria.
Reed and Dennstedt opted to go to Reality, taking a bus down the hill to the church a couple of blocks from the ocean. "As soon as we stepped off the bus, the air was so cool and refreshing to breathe," Reed said. "We really didn't notice it until we got here, how good fresh air can be."
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ken.weiss@latimes.com
steve.chawkins@latimes.com
