Montecito fire consumes 111 homes

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A firefighter sprays water on a burning house in Montecito where more than 100 homes burned during the fast moving Tea Fire. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

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The Tea fire consumes a hillside home in Montecito. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

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Santa Barbara residents watch the advancing Tea fire on the hillside in Montecito. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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Glendale firefighter Eric Carlsen, left, with help from Steve Chiachi, pours water on the remains of the physics building on the Westmont College. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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The Mount Calvary Benedictine Retreat House and Monastery sits under a cloud of smoke from the Montecito Tea fire. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Brother Joseph Brown, of the Benedictine Order of the Holy Cross, walks through the rubble of the monastery. “We’re grateful for all that got out alive,” Brown said. “We are grateful to God for all the wonderful times we had here.” (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Brown takes in the monastery’s devastation. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Scores of homes sit smoldering the morning after flames raced through the hills of Montecito near Santa Barbara. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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The setting sun peeks through bare limbs left after the fire swept through. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Firefighters battle flames as a Montecito home burns. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

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Flames engulf a home on the hillside above Stanwood Drive. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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Flames climb through Rattlesnake Canyon Park in the Los Padres National Forest above Santa Barbara before sunrise today. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Westmont College psychology Professor Brenda Smith surveys the remains of Bauder Hall, a 1920s building that served as Psychology Department offices and classrooms. Smith said her residence on the campus survived the Tea fire. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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“You made it!” cries Sharon Willis, a nurse at Westmont College, as she hugs Nathaniel Taylor, an acquaintance who lives near the school. Taylor, whose parents are professors at Westmont, and Willis each live in a faculty housing tract that was hit hard by the Tea fire. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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A crew with the Santa Barbara City Fire Department puts out flames on a home on Coyote Drive in Montecito. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter with the Torrance Fire Department puts out hot spots on Mountain Drive in Montecito. Crews brought in from throughout California are battling the blaze. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

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Kelly Voyson, left, and his wife, Marya, walk toward the charred remains of their home on Conejo Road in Santa Barbara. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Kelly, left, and Marya Voyson look inside her father’s fire-ravaged car on Conejo Road in Santa Barbara. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Westmont College students Sheeva Lotfian of Laguna Niguel, left, and Megan Beard of Medford, Ore., are among the approximately 800 people who took refuge in the gym on the Santa Barbara campus. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Santa Barbara resident Russ Behm, rests at an evacuation center at San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara. Behm spent the night at the Red Cross shelter and as of Friday morning did not know whether his house had survived the fire. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Santa Barbara resident Rosario Rossano, left, reads about the fire as her daughter Marisol, 2, looks on. The family, including Rossano’s father, Joel Ramos, and her daughter Arwen, 3, stayed at the evacuation center at San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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A California Department of Forestry air tanker flies over dozens of smoldering homes in the Montecito area. (Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press)

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Firefighters look over a home that was destroyed Thursday night when the Tea fire swept through the Montecito area. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighter looks out from a damaged home. (Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images)

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Patio furniture angles down a steep cliff on the deck area of a home that burned during the Tea fire. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

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Nikos Hatzakis of the Compton Fire Department is framed by the carcass of a charred vintage car. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

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A firefighting plane drops a load of fire retardant over the Tea fire in Montecito. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Smoke hangs in the air as the sun rises Friday morning, revealing the damage a fast-moving fire brought to the area. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

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A burned motorcycle sits in smoldering ashes in the driveway of a home that was destroyed by the fire that started Thursday evening. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

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Cal Fire Battalion Chief Bill Fisher tells Santa Barbara resident Gene Winkler, 68, that he may have to leave his home. Winkler spent the night at his home on Gibraltar Road as many of his neighbors evacuated. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Sabrina Bell-Bonadeo and her fiance, John Weber, survey the damage near a family member’s home that survived the fire. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

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Clint Hull of the Ventura County Fire Department hits a hot spot on the Mount Calvary Monastery, built in 1927. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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The charred remains of a Porsche sit on the lot of a destroyed home on Coyote Road in Montecito. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

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A charred car rests in the middle of a smoldering landscape along Conejo Road in Santa Barbara. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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A worker with Tidwell Excavating looks over devastation from the Tea fire to homes along Conejo Road in Santa Barbara. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Kelly Voyson, left, and his wife, Marya, in the charred remains of their home in Santa Barbara. “It’s kind of crazy. We’ve lost everything we’ve owned. We’re homeless,” Voyson said. They are staying in a Santa Barbara hotel. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Marya Voyson walks through the ruins of what was her home on Conejo Road in Santa Barbara. Voyson lived there with her husband and children for the last 25 years. “It’s still my home. Everybody’s going to rebuild. I’m hopeful,” Voyson said. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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The charred remnants of one of the approximately 100 homes destroyed in the Tea fire in the hills above Montecito near Santa Barbara. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

By Louis Sahagun, Steve Chawkins and Mitchell Landsberg

Nov. 15, 2008 12 AM PT

Reporting from Los Angeles and Montecito — As a wildfire that devastated the wealthy enclave of Montecito settled down late Friday, a second blaze erupted in Sylmar amid heavy winds and destroyed at least three structures and scorched 100 acres, authorities said.

The Montecito blaze destroyed 111 residences and damaged nine near Santa Barbara before flame-stoking winds died down and the fire stabilized. However, authorities cautioned that the totals could go higher; 1,500 homes were still threatened, and the fire was not contained. Flames had consumed 1,800 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Meanwhile, in Sylmar, heavy Santa Ana winds stoked a fire in the hills above Veterans Memorial Park that began around 10:30 p.m., officials said. Winds quickly pushed the fire toward a line of nearby homes, burning at least three structures by midnight and threatening many more, authorities said.

The Los Angeles City Fire Department -- which had sent strike teams to fight the fire in Montecito on Thursday night -- sent 100 firefighters to the Sylmar blaze. Additional crews from Angeles National Forest joined them.

It promised to be a difficult battle, as Santa Ana winds up to 70 mph are forecast through today, with a red-flag warning in effect for canyons and valleys in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Further north, the Montecito fire was smaller than many of the wildfires that have ravaged Southern California in recent years, but its speed and ferocity exacted a huge toll in property damage and left residents stunned. After breaking out at 6 p.m. Thursday, the fire raced unchecked through the populated slopes of the Santa Ynez Mountains, exacerbated by 70 mph winds, combustible brush and narrow roads that became clogged with incoming fire crews and outgoing evacuees.

“This thing came on so fast, you just couldn’t believe it,” actor and homeowner Rob Lowe said Friday. “Embers were raining down, they were in our hair, they were in our shirts. . . . It was absolutely Armageddon.”

Another resident said he was awed by the fire’s destructive force.

“We watched probably about $60 million” worth of houses “just burning out on Mountain Valley, a real posh area,” said Paul Morison, who defended and saved his own home in the Riviera area of Montecito. “This morning they’re gone. . . . The big house we used to look at, probably over 10,000 square feet, there’s nothing.”

Morison estimated that 50 houses had burned around his. He and two friends had defied the flames with garden hoses until 3:30 a.m. Friday.

Among the celebrities with homes in the area are Lowe, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Douglas. Lowe and Winfrey, talking by phone on Winfrey’s television show Friday, said their homes escaped damage. An estate owned by actor Christopher Lloyd and valued last year at $11.3 million sustained major damage, however. Lloyd was filming in Vancouver, but his caretaker “fled for his life,” said Lisa Loiacono of Sotheby’s International Realty.

A 98-year-old man who was evacuated to a hotel died, according to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown. He said the man had multiple medical problems and his death was being treated as “potentially a fatality related to the fire.”

Seven people suffered burns, Santa Barbara County Fire Chief John Scherrei said. Two were taken to a burn center in Sherman Oaks, and five had lesser injuries, he said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency for Santa Barbara County.

The wind tapered to near calm Friday, providing firefighters with conditions that were much better than forecast. Predictions called for warm, dry weather but relatively mild winds in the Santa Barbara area this weekend. About 5,500 people remained displaced, according to Santa Barbara County Supervisor Salud Carbajal, and firefighters were taking no chances.

“It’s still very unstable, and we’re not by any means ready for people to get back into their homes,” said Santa Barbara Deputy Police Chief Richard Glaus.

As is often the case with Southern California wildfires, the wind caused the fire to hopscotch in places, sparing some homes while igniting others. Some homeowners enhanced their luck through foresight or sheer grit.

When Maurizio Barattucci pulled up Friday morning to the Santa Barbara home he had evacuated the night before, he saw the following scene: To the left, six houses burned to the ground. To the right, four more. In all, 15 homes in his immediate neighborhood were destroyed.

In front of him, still standing, was his house, covered in ash. Water was running everywhere. Barattucci, 69, and his wife Rochelle Barattucci, 70, had left their old-fashioned yard sprinkler running when they evacuated Thursday evening. The pipes had melted during the fire, but the sprinkler had done its job. The sprinkler system had come with the 1924 house on Camino Alto, and it had saved them once before, in the Coyote fire of 1977.

“We were actually the only ones on the street that survived that fire, and it just happened again,” Barattucci said.

Alvaro Suman was among the less fortunate. The working artist evacuated the studio where he paints and sculpts and where he had kept his best work. On Friday, he learned that it was destroyed.

“All my art, my clay work, my paintings -- all gone,” said Suman, 56, who has exhibited widely in the U.S. and Mexico.

On a hilltop above Rattlesnake Canyon, a popular hiking area, fire engulfed a Benedictine monastery, Mount Calvary.

On the opposite side of the canyon, fire raced up a slope to the edge of another hilltop religious retreat, St. Mary’s, a ministry of the Sisters of the Holy Nativity. The flames reached 20 feet above the church rooftop. But apart from cracked windows, firefighters managed to protect the sanctuary and surrounding buildings.

The blaze destroyed numerous multimillion-dollar houses but also took a toll on more modest neighborhoods.

Retired actor Richardson Morse walked slowly along a gravel road with arms folded in disbelief at the toll taken in Santa Barbara’s storied Hydeville, a mountain community north of downtown Santa Barbara that locals call a funky hippie village, once known for communal nude wine grape stomps.

It is where some people say hot tubs came into vogue. It was all part of the early 1960s lifestyle that continued in an island of add-on homes that somehow escaped the mansionization of the rest of the upscale seaside city.

In the yards of some homes were shards of the artistic handmade pottery made by local artists.

The fire broke out in the Cold Springs area, near an abandoned hilltop shelter. The Tea House, built early in the 20th century and once surrounded by elaborate waterworks, had long since fallen into disrepair, according to former Montecito Fire Chief Ron McClain.

The cause of the blaze remained undetermined.

Sahagun, Chawkins and Landsberg are Times staff writers.

[email protected]

mitchell.landsberg

@latimes.com

Times staff writers Ari Bloomekatz, Jia-Rui Chong, Kenneth R. Weiss, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Catherine Saillant contributed to this report.