Vern Hall felt blessed when his lookout house that sits atop the Circle Bar-B resort barely managed to survive the Sherpa Fire five years ago, but watched in heartbreak as his home of nearly 20 years was destroyed by the Alisal Fire.
“The biggest thing about losing your home is that you lose your history,” Hall told Noozhawk. “All of my writings from college, all of my stories, all of my family heirlooms, they’re all gone.”
The Alisal Fire erupted on the afternoon of Oct. 11 and spread rapidly as windy conditions fanned the flames along the Gaviota Coast, prompting evacuation orders and warnings for hundreds of people.
As of Friday, the blaze had burned more than 16,962 acres and was at 97% containment, according to the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
Hall and his wife, Donna, were headed down the hill to Mulligan’s Cafe on Monday afternoon when they were stopped by a California Highway Patrol officer at the end of Refugio Road.
“He says to us, ‘If you leave, you’re not coming back in because we’re closing the road,’” Hall said.
The Halls immediately went back up to their cabin along Refugio Road and frantically packed all of the necessities: important documents, clothes, medicine, family photos. Belongings in hand, they drove their motor home down the road to find shelter at the Elk’s Club.
Hall sat at the Elk’s Club listening to the news when someone told him that all of the mailboxes on Refugio Road were burned, he said.
“I told my wife that if the mailboxes are gone, our house is gone,” he continued.
Hall went back up to his ranch a few days later to look at the “unbelievable” damage.
“There was absolutely nothing left,” he said. “The hill is barren now, there is nothing on that hill. Nothing survived.”
Hall said that he and his wife were very fortunate to be able to grab their important items before the fire destroyed their home, but there was two things they forgot: Donna’s father’s and brother’s ashes.
“The thing is, when you lose a house to a fire, so much of the other stuff is repurchaseable,” Hall said. “But you lose your history.”
Hall said he is unsure whether they will be able to rebuild the place he has called home for 19 years, but said they would be back in a heartbeat if they could.
Despite losing their home, the Halls have tried to keep a positive attitude and decided to spend time traveling in their motor home that they now live out of.
“My wife and I are going to live like nomads for a while,” he said. “It’s just a change of life, that’s what it is. I’m not going to sit here and dwell on the past and what I’ve lost.”
At least 12 homes and one outbuilding were destroyed by the wind-driven Alisal Fire, according to Los Padres National Forest officials.
One of those was the home of Mariah and Landon Smith and their two young daughters, Ally and Sage.
Mariah Smith was at work at Sansum Clinic when she got a phone call from a neighbor saying that a fire had erupted somewhere on Refugio Road.
“I left work early and immediately started driving towards Gaviota because fire season could just go so quickly, but no one had any idea of how bad this could get,” she told Noozhawk.
Landon Smith’s mother lives on Arroyo Quemado Lane, so the Smiths went straight to his mom’s house to help her move out bins and bins of family pictures.
The Smiths knew they had to evacuate when the police showed up, so Mariah left Landon’s mom’s home in her car with her youngest daughter, Sage. Landon’s mom left in a separate car, and Landon stayed behind a little longer to hose down the roof of his mom’s house.
“We never had the chance to evacuate from our house on Refugio because the fire was coming up to Landon’s family’s house,” Mariah Smith said. “That’s when it all got pretty crazy, because the fire was coming down the mountain so quickly that you couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.”
She drove south to evacuate, but the fire had already hit Tajiguas. Driving between two walls of fire, blinded by the smoke, she flipped around on the freeway and started driving north toward a family member’s house in Solvang instead.
Smith’s oldest daughter, Ally, was at school at the time the rest of the family was trying to evacuate, so she stayed at a friend’s house for hours before Mariah Smith was able to come back to pick her up.
“She’s 8 years old, and she couldn’t figure out why we didn’t pick her up,” Mariah Smith said.
She trekked back down Highway 154 at midnight to pick up Ally. Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with the winds howling in every direction and a night sky lit up by flames, they made it back to Solvang at 2:30 in the morning.
The Smiths’ home on Refugio was destroyed, along with their 30-foot yurt that a friend was staying in, water tanks, solar panels and everything else on the property.
“It burned down to the ground; the roof is actually on the ground,” Mariah Smith said.
Landon’s mother’s house survived the fire, but the home suffered smoke damage.
The friend who was living in the yurt on the Smiths’ property, Christina Moore, not only lost her home in the fire, but her small flower farm succumbed to severe damage as well.
Moore started her small farm business, Heart Face Flowers, during the past growing season, and while many parts of her field survived the fire, there was serious damage to her irrigation systems and she lost many plant starts that were supposed to be next spring’s flowers, according to a GoFundMe campaign created for Moore.
The heat and smoke from the fire “severely impacted” the last bloom of her fall flowers, affecting Moore’s revenue resource.
The money raised in the GoFundMe campaign will help replace thousands of baby plants lost to the fire, carry Moore through the rest of her farming season as she repairs damage and prepares for next spring’s grow, and help her purchase a yurt and living supplies to replace her home and personal possessions.
The GoFundMe raised more than $15,000 as of Friday, far surpassing the $10,000 goal.
A GoFundMe campaign also was created for the Smith family, and as of Friday afternoon, it had surpassed its $30,000 goal.
“We are so thankful for our incredible community and the firefighters that protect Gaviota,” Mariah Smith said. “We feel so supported and lifted by our incredible friends, family and community.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
