Tea Fire, November 2008

This fire broke out less than a mile from where we were living.  I was at home when I received a phone call from a friend.  He was exercising at the Santa Barbara Athletic Club when he chanced to look up at the hills and saw some smoke in the general vicinity of our rental.  He phoned me, I went outside, and there it was.  I in turn phoned Dana at Cate, who for once in his young life answered his cell phone.  He drove back and we filled our two cars with as much stuff as we could and drove out of there, with flames extremely close to the road.  Had we taken any longer, we would have been forced to leave our cars and evacuate on foot, down the side of the mountain and away from the road.

The fire eventually burned almost 2,000 acres and destroyed about 200 homes.  It got in the national headlines mainly because it caused the evacuation of some Hollywood notables living in Montecito (Rob Lowe, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bridges, and Kirk Douglas, to name a few).

Tea Fire, Nov 2008

We spent the next several weeks in a room at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort, right on the water, within walking distance of Commission Junction, and paid for by our insurance.  Best of all, they allowed dogs.  Worst of all was the quality of the room service food.  We kept ordering different menu items, hoping to find something to our liking, but no luck.

During the time we were at the Doubletree, we would periodically try to visit our rental on Canon View, but the fire and smoke remained for weeks, making visits impossible.  When we were finally about to return, we discovered smoke damage to most of our belongs, the back porch partially burned, and the vegetation gone around most of the house, and across the street as well. We were lucky – the two homes next to ours were burned to the ground.

Meanwhile, Caren was looking for another place to rent, as were many of the people who had lost their homes.  She would get the names of rentals from the Internet each morning, but by the time she contacted the realtors, they were rented.  Finally, as she was returning from another unsuccessful day’s search, she saw a woman leaving her front door carrying a box.  On a hunch, Caren asked the woman if she was moving, and she was.  So Caren called up the woman’s realtor, who was surprised that someone was interested in the home before it even went on the market.  Long story short, we got the house, at 5031 Pacific Village Drive in Carpinteria, a short walk to the beach, lovely neighborhood, our best rental yet.