Costly Holocaust

On a balmy evening last week, a young man was flying his box kite in a posh residential neighborhood to the northeast of Santa Barbara, Calif. Suddenly the kite swooped into power lines, causing a short circuit that showered sparks and ignited the drought-dried chaparral below. Whipped by winds of up to 40 m.p.h., the blaze roared down the hills on a one-mile front toward the coastal city (pop. 73,000). Said one awed witness: "Homes went up with a huge whoosh and puff. Palm trees exploded like Roman candles."

While more than 1,000 fire fighters battled the holocaust, some people tried desperately to save their houses on their own. Said Lawyer Ron Cook: "I got on the roof and started hosing it down. We stuck it out until the heat got so bad we couldn't stand it. Then we left with the dog, cat, our daughter and one bag of dirty laundry." By next morning, all that remained of Cook's $100,000 house was a crumbling stone fireplace and a flattened metal garage door.

Shifting direction with the swirling and eddying wind, the fire capriciously leapfrogged several of the Spanish-style houses. The $60,000 home of high school Dean Robert Mangus was saved primarily by a grove of avocado trees, which served as a fire screen. Said Robert's wife Jean: "The next morning there was a beautiful sunrise. All we could hear was somebody sobbing and it echoed through the canyon."

The fire scorched 700 acres in all and destroyed almost 200 houses, some of them worth as much as $350,000. There were no fatalities or serious injuries, but the total damage--estimated at up to $20 million--made the blaze the worst ever in Santa Barbara's history. Fire Chief William Patterson warned that because of the drought the fire season would last several months longer than usual. Said he: "This is only the prelude."

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