Quote:
Originally Posted by rsmurano
I also lived in California (Montecito Santa Barbara area) and our house was burned down with 230 others back in 1977 due to Santa Ana winds. 1977 Sycamore Fire - Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade
Back then we had cedar shingle roofs, Beauty brick, wood siding. We lived in a canyon and while packing up the van, fire jumped over the hill, over half a mile were the fire was burning and now it was directly on the other side of the road from us. Winds were almost 100mph. We left down the road and parked about a mile away. We had the same issue with no water pressure. We saw a fire truck try to hook up to a hydrant near us and got nothing so they kept going. My neighbor stayed with his house so I tried to walk back to the house in the dry creek along the road but the embers were flying all around me so I went back to the car.
According to my neighbor, the houses with storage sheds started burning and embers were landing on the cedar shingles and that’s all it took. My neighbor with little water pressure put as many sheets and bed covers in the bathtub to get them soaked and laid them on his roof and this saved his house. He was lucky.
We were in another 20,000 acre fire some 15 years later and had to be evacuated. This time, we all had asphalt shingles but with high winds, burning tree branches falling on the houses, and cedar wood siding, it didn’t take much to start the houses on fire.
Fires create an inferno and embers fly blocks if not miles from the existing fire to start new fires. |
I was going to UCSB and living in Goleta that night. As I recall, with the Santa Ana's it was 98 degrees around midnight (unheard of in that area) and when the winds shifted, it dropped to 74 in about 15 minutes.