Power outages and Smoke - The first days of the Thomas Fire

Ominous Beginnings . . . 

It was Monday night, December 4th when the power went out for the first time. Susan and I were relaxing, watching a series on NetFlix when the power went out at about 10 pm. We took it as a sign it was time for bed. Unfortunately, the power went on and off a few times during the night, which was not conducive to a good night's sleep.

When we woke up on Tuesday morning, we learned that the source of the power outage was a fire burning in Santa Paula. Santa Paula is forty miles south and east of Santa Barbara, not far from Ojai.

I went out on my usual Tuesday morning bike ride with Adam and Chris. There was a fair amount of smoke in the air from the fire -- the wind must have been blowing east to west. So we decided to take a different route than usual to avoid the smoke. Instead of riding east toward Carpinteria, we headed North and up into the hills above Montecito and Santa Barbara. As soon as we got to the top of Ortega Ridge we could see a large plume of smoke out in the distance. It's always a bit surprising to me how much closer we actually are to things than we think we are. This fire was burning 40 miles away and we could smell the smoke and see the smoke plume easily. It takes at least an hour to drive to Santa Paula from where we live in Montecito and yet we were already experiencing some of the effects of this fire. We rode high up into the hills of Montecito, not realizing that the landscape we were riding in would soon be completely changed.


From the route map above, you can see that the northern leg of our ride is exactly the southern boundary of where the Thomas Fire burned a full week later. The hills where we were riding on that Tuesday morning look COMPLETELY different today. In fact, that area is still under mandatory evacuation so you can't even go there yet.

I do remember feeling concerned as we took a couple of breaks during the ride to take in the views. It's always beautiful to ride up into the hills and look out over the Santa Barbara Channel and the Channel Islands three thousand feet below. But I couldn't help looking to the east where the smoke plume was growing.