Tag archives: wildfire
As another year passes, we reflect on notable events in the Montecito community. From California’s largest wildfire, progress on development and new businesses, school happenings, retirements, and more, 2017 was a busy year in Montecito. While far from all-inclusive, here is a snapshot of our community’s happenings in 2017. Thomas Fire Without a doubt, […]
We only had a little over an hour with Montecito Fire chief Chip Hickman, as he had to escort some of the people who’d lost their homes back to their property, but we made the most of our time. No Montecito firefighters were lost or even hurt throughout the ordeal. There was one death, that […]
At 10 am on Tuesday, December 12, dozens of Montecito firefighters and personnel gathered at Fire Station 1 for a morning briefing on the Thomas Fire, which, as of press time, had burned 234,200 acres and was 20 percent contained. For more than a week, MFPD has been operating in an “all-hands-on-deck” mode, meaning 24-hour […]
A virtual army of nearly 6,500 firefighters, along with 30-plus helicopters, various other aircraft, fire trucks, bulldozers, and more are, as we write this, working in the back country, mostly out of sight, securing fire lines and control points by a combination of controlled backfires, soaking unburned vegetation, creating breaks where no dry foliage is […]
Like most of the region, people at Westmont learned about the Thomas Fire following the massive power outage December 4 that thrust the entire campus and 1,200 students into darkness. The disruption continued into the morning hours as officials scrambled to fix infrastructure that crippled the college’s website and email servers. Smoke from the blaze […]



