Stay safe Paul

HA

I meant fun stuff to do. Not indentured servitude. 😆

Shut up!
You're scaring him off.

Mario... if you still have a tractor, you'd never be able to get Jake to leave!

We're hanging in here with the fire.  No one has been able to reenter the evacuation zones yet, so lots of people still displaced and basically all of my projects are shut down.  One property under construction had fire burn to the hill behind it (I think within a couple hundred yards) but the firefighters were able to keep it away from the house.

Firefighters are still on several properties that I've been monitoring via cameras and several properties have been offline (no power/internet) for 2 days so have lots ability to monitor them.  One property came back online last night after being down for two days.  Last time I could see the cameras, flames were close and the fire crew was pulling out their trucks.

All these properties have backup generators, but the fire crews have been shutting off natural gas lines and emptying propane tanks causing the generators to fail.

Air quality at our house seems better this morning and don't see any new ash coming down.

Here's a photo that someone else took Tuesday night showing fire up above town.  For those of you familiar with SB, this is from leadbetter beach with the marina in the background and stadium lights from SBCC on the left:

[img][/img][/url]

Fire still causing big impacts here.  All of Montecito and part of Santa Barbara are under mandatory evacuations since early Saturday and a large part of Santa Barbara is under a voluntary evacuation.

Strong winds really fueled the fire Saturday and we were able to see tall flames up in the mountain standing in our front yard.  I was monitoring a property via cameras Saturday morning and they had fire crews onsite and bushes/hedges burning at the edge of the property and then the cameras went out and I haven't been able to reconnect again.

Many of my clients have been evacuated for more than a week now and several of the properties are still offline, so not really sure about damage.

Saturday morning during all the evacuations the Northbound 101 freeway was shut down because of the fire so no one could enter town... on the other side of town the Northbound 101 heading out of town was shut down for around 20hrs because a gas tanker overturned and shut down the freeway.  Highway 192 which is a mountain pass was also closed down for fire truck access so basically any road that was still open was grid-locked with people trying to relocate.

Yesterday and today have been much better and a few more houses have been lost but firefighters have been getting it under control.  Evacuations remain in effect until at least Thursday because strong winds are forecast for Wednesday which could quickly drive the fire back into town.

Media is saying this is now the 3rd largest fire in California history.

That picture above looks pretty apocalyptic. That's like Roland Emmerich movie stuff.

The fire is 86% contained now after burning for about 3 weeks and consuming more than 440 square miles of land. Media stated that it's the largest fire in California history.

The firefighters had enough time to prepare here in Santa Barbara that they were able to save most of the homes and made it possible for everyone to get back into their homes last Thursday (many were evacuated for 2 weeks).

The video is from a surveillance camera in the back of a client's property. Firefighters were onsite here for several days doing there best to protect the house. The mountain burned all the way down to the back of the guest house and caused significant damage to landscaping and some structures on the hillside, but none of the main buildings were burned.

You can see a pile of fire hose in the lower right corner abandoned by the fire department before they had to flee.  I can't tell for sure, but I think the strong winds at times are helicopters making water drops to keep the guest house (which is just out of the frame on the right) from burning.

I was monitoring cameras for the homeowners until they went out.  This camera didn't survive and the house was without power for 4 days (power poles burned) and without ISP service for 5-6 days (their infrastructure at the road burned).

" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen>

The winds! Goodness the winds.

They were doing air drops around the house, so I think some of the big wind gusts might be down wash from the helicopters?