LOS ANGELES AND SACRAMENTO — As the Jesusita fire raged around Santa Barbara this week, Mitchell Sjerven decided to temporarily close his Seagrass restaurant near the normally bustling State Street.
The move to shutter the elegant "coastal cuisine" spot, where a "surf-and-turf" entree costs $48, could cost thousands of dollars.
On the opposite side of the street, just outside the border of the evacuation area, Sjerven's intimate, French-inspired Bouchon restaurant picked up the slack by drawing a steady stream of hungry evacuees.
The fast-moving flames have already claimed dozens of homes and more than 1,000 acres in Santa Barbara's scenic canyon neighborhoods. But while the area's economy had already felt the sting by Thursday afternoon, business owners held out hope that the major retail centers would be spared.
What the flames might hold for this normally busy Mother Day's weekend remained a puzzle. It was just too early and too dicey to predict, residents and fire officials said.
Santa Barbara County, known for its wine country and coastal beauty, may lose a chunk of its "billion-dollar" tourist trade, said Steve Cushman, president of the city's Chamber of Commerce. Most visitors are Southern Californians who visit the area only for day trips and who will probably stay away until long after the fires die down, he said.
Already, the fire threat has closed tourist destinations such as Mission Santa Barbara and the Museum of Natural History.
The Santa Barbara Conference & Visitors Bureau canceled its annual tourism meeting because most of the 300 guests were too busy catering to evacuees to attend the Thursday afternoon event, said Sjerven, a board member.
"While Rome is burning, we don't want to be seen as fiddling," he said. So the group donated the luncheon to local firefighters.
But evacuees, numbering 13,000 and growing, could make up for the lost tourist revenue, he said.
His own home threatened by the flames, Cushman spent Wednesday night at a local hotel and ate out for dinner.
"I hate to say this, but so many people have been evacuated that there'll be a positive impact on local businesses," Cushman said.
Hotels, many of them offering deeply discounted rates, are packed with residents displaced from their homes. About 10 are already filled to capacity.
