Montecito fire 40% contained; 111 residences destroyed
Officials caution that damage totals could rise, though calming winds give firefighters a break. Gov. Schwarzenegger, who has declared a state of emergency in Santa Barbara County, will visit today.
Reporting from Los Angeles and Montecito — A wildfire that devastated the wealthy enclave of Montecito was 40% contained by this morning, officials said, even as firefighters to the south battled a wind-driven blaze that began late Friday in Sylmar.
The Montecito blaze destroyed 111 residences and damaged nine near Santa Barbara before flame-stoking winds died down and the fire stabilized. However, authorities cautioned that the totals could go higher; 1,500 homes were still threatened and mandatory evacuations remained in effect for numerous neighborhoods.
By this morning, flames had consumed 1,800 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The Montecito blaze, known as the Tea fire, was smaller than many of the wildfires that have ravaged Southern California in recent years, but its speed and ferocity exacted a huge toll in property damage and left residents stunned. After breaking out at 6 p.m. Thursday, the fire raced unchecked through the populated slopes of the Santa Ynez Mountains, exacerbated by 70-mph winds, combustible brush and narrow roads that became clogged with incoming fire crews and outgoing evacuees.
"This thing came on so fast, you just couldn't believe it," actor and homeowner Rob Lowe said Friday. "Embers were raining down, they were in our hair, they were in our shirts. . . . It was absolutely Armageddon."
Another resident said he was awed by the fire's destructive force.
"We watched probably about $60 million" worth of houses "just burning out on Mountain Valley, a real posh area," said Paul Morison, who defended and saved his own home in the Riviera area of Montecito. "This morning they're gone. . . . The big house we used to look at, probably over 10,000 square feet, there's nothing."
Morison estimated that 50 houses had burned around his. He and two friends had defied the flames with garden hoses until 3:30 a.m. Friday.
Among the celebrities with homes in the area are Lowe, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Douglas. Lowe and Winfrey, talking by phone on Winfrey's television show Friday, said their homes escaped damage. An estate owned by actor Christopher Lloyd and valued last year at $11.3 million sustained major damage, however. Lloyd was filming in Vancouver, but his caretaker "fled for his life," said Lisa Loiacono of Sotheby's International Realty.
