SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Investigators say the Santa Barbara County wildfire that has scorched 13 square miles and destroyed dozens of homes was apparently sparked by a power tool used to clear vegetation.
Officials are asking the public for help in identifying anyone who was clearing brush in the area last Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, all but approximately 350 of the 30,000 or so people who were forced to flee to safer ground were allowed to return home Sunday as firefighters had the blaze 65 percent contained. The fire has destroyed 77 homes and damaged 22 others.
Relieved to see their ash-covered houses still intact, grateful homeowners paid tribute to firefighters by tooting car horns and posting large thank-you signs on their front lawns.
The firefighters, who began to get the upper hand this weekend, were just as quick to share the credit.
They say if residents of the hillside homes ringing Santa Barbara hadn’t been aggressive in clearing brush and fire-prone plants from their property, hundreds of homes could have been lost.
Amid cooler weather conditions in Santa Barbara on Sunday, more than 4,500 firefighters worked to contain as much of the blaze as they could before the hot, dry winds that pushed flames on homes earlier in the week returned, as early as tonight.
Richard Martin, a 73-year-old retired University of California-Santa Barbara chemistry professor, rode out the worst of the blaze in a 5-by-7-foot concrete bunker he built to store important documents.
Martin and his wife, Penny, ducked in and out of the bunker to battle spot fires on the oak trees surrounding their four-level home.
He credited rooftop sprinklers and planting low, fire-resistant plants around the edge of his home with its survival.
“All the trees, the leaves, are all dead because they’ve been scorched,” Martin said.
“But those (fire-resistant) plants haven’t been scorched. They look normal.”
Numbers
13 Area, in square miles, burned by wildfires in California’s Santa Barbara County
77 Homes destroyed
22 Homes damaged
30,000 People evacuated
4,500 Firefighters involved in the battle
