Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a two-part history of the 1971 Romero Fire. Part 2 will tell the story of the four men who died during the fire and the memorial built in their honor.

On Oct. 6, 1971, Santa Barbara County had gone 131 days without rain. The previous season had produced just 13.69 inches of precipitation — well below the long-term average— and several preceding wet years had left the South Coast’s hillsides thick with mature chaparral and native grasses.

By early fall, that growth had become a vast supply of critically dry fuel.

Fire agencies understood the risk. A Phase Two fire-danger alert was already in effect, closing vulnerable backcountry areas and adding checkpoints, patrols and prevention personnel across the Santa Barbara front country.

Forest Service crews, bulldozers, engines, water tenders and the Los Prietos Hotshots were available for immediate response.

Still, no level of preparation could eliminate the danger of a fire starting in the wrong place under extreme conditions. Forty-five minutes before the Romero Fire began, a nearby weather station recorded 100-degree heat and 9% relative humidity as sundowner winds developed over the South Coast.

A Fire Takes Hold

The fire started at about 3:30 p.m. near Bella Vista Drive, between Romero Canyon and Ladera Lane, above Summerland. It was later determined to have been deliberately set, though the arson investigation and the prosecution of Pat Russ belong more fully to the second part of this series.

Howard Fenton reported the fire at 3:57 p.m. to the Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Department. The location — deep in Picay Canyon behind Summerland — initially concealed the developing smoke column from the La Cumbre Lookout, which did not see it until 4:03 p.m.

The response came fast. By 4:01 p.m., every Forest Service unit in the Santa Barbara Ranger District, including the Los Prietos Hotshots, was moving toward the fire.

Air tankers were being loaded a minute later, and engines and crews came from the Forest Service, California Division of Forestry, Santa Barbara County, Santa Barbara city, Montecito, Carpinteria-Summerland and Ventura County.

But the fire already had the advantage. Within five minutes of its report, the smoke column had climbed roughly 1,500 feet, and early photographs indicated that 30 to 40 acres had burned.

Flames were being pushed northeast through heavy chaparral on steep slopes where firefighters could make little progress.

Forest Service Fire Control Officer Ben Lyon assumed command as fire boss, with Assistant Fire Control Officer Jerry Berry as line boss.

Lyon later concluded that initial attack crews would have needed to arrive five to 15 minutes sooner to have had a chance at stopping the fire — and that even then, given the conditions, success was doubtful.

The strategy shifted quickly from stopping the fire at its source to protecting people and property while seeking a place to hold it. Lyon looked to the East Camino Cielo fuelbreak as a potential control line.

Toro Canyon Under Threat

While crews worked on the upper slopes, city and county firefighters were assigned to protect homes along Bella Vista and Ladera lanes and in Toro Canyon. The fire was already climbing the canyon walls and bearing down on residences.

At 6 p.m., a house trailer and flatbed truck were destroyed. Residents hurried to gather belongings, livestock and whatever else could be moved. One woman, packing only a small suitcase before leaving Toro Canyon Road, remarked that with every fire she packed a little less.

C.L. Stegall spent the hour before the fire arrived moving saddles and riding equipment from a shed. Unable to trailer his four horses and tame ram, he scattered oats in a relatively clear field and coaxed the animals there while flames burned on both canyon walls.

By evening, the fire had reached the East Camino Cielo crest and crossed into the broad, grass-covered fuelbreak. Firefighters were able to suppress portions of the lower-intensity grass fire there, but the blaze kept spreading elsewhere.

After dark, the fire’s behavior changed sharply. Sundowner winds pushed the flames downhill in a broad, hot front across Bella Vista and Ladera lanes, destroying four homes.

Howard and Mrs. Fenton had decided to stay at their newly built home. As the fire crowned through the trees overhead, they cut lengths of hose to breathe through and sheltered in their swimming pool for about 20 minutes. They survived, and their home somehow did, too.

By daylight on Thursday, the fire had burned through Toro Canyon from East Valley Road to the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains. It had consumed about 3,600 acres and spread roughly two miles eastward during the night.

The Carpinteria Line

The operational problem now was clear: protect Summerland and Carpinteria while preventing the fire from escaping east across the mountains toward Ventura County. The lower flank could be approached from the foothills, but the upper eastern side of the fire was hemmed by steep slopes and limited ridgelines.

Air tankers worked to slow the eastern flank, making repeated drops in hopes that ground crews could gain enough time to establish a holding line.

Residents gathered at the Santa Barbara airport to watch the tankers’ steady departures and returns, drawn by the roar of the old aircraft and the scale of the aerial attack.

A temporary marine layer moderated some portions of the fire Thursday afternoon. The blaze added about 550 acres during the morning, much of it in Oil Canyon and Arroyo Paredon east of Toro Canyon. Ground crews made some gains on the lower eastern edge, the line considered most critical because of its proximity to Carpinteria.

The upper eastern flank remained a problem. The mountain wall above Carpinteria was so steep that bulldozers could not readily work a line down it. Firefighters searched for a ridgeline that could anchor a defense, while planes continued dropping retardant into inaccessible brush.

Weather forecasts offered cautious encouragement. Thursday evening’s forecast called for mostly light northerly downslope winds, with gusts no stronger than 15 mph; an update predicted winds under 8 mph, high humidity and a possible low fog layer by morning.

That forecast did not hold. Sudden, powerful down-canyon winds led to a blowup in Santa Monica Canyon, where a dozer crew was attempting to construct a containment line.

The event killed four men and severely injured others; their individual stories and the later memorial will be explored in the second story of this series.

The immediate work did not stop. By Friday morning, firefighters were again concentrating on the urgent task of keeping the fire out of the Carpinteria Valley. Lyon, the Forest Service fire control officer, told his crews that their job was to keep the blaze away from populated areas; the southeast flank was then about two miles from downtown Carpinteria.

The Long Holding Action

The scale of the suppression effort grew as the fire continued east.

Fire camps supported exhausted line crews, air-tanker personnel, bulldozer operators, hotshot crews and volunteers. Minimum-security inmates from the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo prepared food at camp.

Firefighters slept where they could, sometimes in disposable paper-bag bedrolls placed in any available shade.

The ground work was punishing. In temperatures near 95 degrees, crews faced air made still hotter by the fire, dense smoke and thousands of small burning pockets left behind by the main flame front. Men worked in bursts, then paused over their tools to recover enough breath to continue.

The next target was Divide Peak, where Lyon hoped crews could establish a durable line before the fire escaped farther east. He had aircraft, bulldozers and hotshot crews, but every decision was limited by the terrain.

The slopes were too steep and rugged for conventional dozer lines in many places, and the fire could move through inaccessible canyons faster than crews could close them off.

On Saturday, conditions again shifted against firefighters. Sundowner winds returned above Carpinteria, reigniting the foothills and burning a substantial portion of the watershed. By 10 p.m., the fire had reached the edge of town near Carpinteria High School.

The sea breeze then did what firefighters could not: it turned the fire away from town. But the same change pushed the blaze east, toward Ventura County.

The fire did not race across the mountainside in one dramatic run. Instead, it kept advancing at a steady, destructive pace, burning in a nearly 3-mile line from the foothills to the crest.

Forest Service official Don Roberts summarized the difficulty plainly: The terrain was against them, the weather was against them, and there was little usable country for building fire lines.

Divide Peak and Rincon Ridge

Lyon concentrated more of his resources around Divide Peak, relying on an expanding fleet of aircraft to reduce the fire’s intensity long enough for dozers and hand crews to establish a line. On Saturday alone, 17 aircraft dropped an estimated 300,000 gallons of retardant.

For the next three days, aircraft flew continuous sorties, most from Goleta and some from Burbank. Their drops supported a defensive holding action as the fire edged toward Divide Peak, but Lyon warned that the blaze remained neither controlled nor contained.

On Tuesday, the fire burned out of a canyon below the 4,700-foot peak and advanced in a wedge several hundred feet wide. Firefighters’ man-made line at Rincon Ridge was their last major defense before Rincon Creek.

Local old-timers believed fires did not cross that creek, but Lyon could not rely on a belief when the ridge line itself was in danger.

The fire crossed the Rincon firebreak and moved toward the county line.

On the most inaccessible ground, hotshot crews became essential. Helicopters inserted them near hot spots, where they sprinted from the landing areas with Pulaskis, shovels and axes. They cut line through brush that bulldozers could not reach, clearing and digging on slopes where machinery could not safely operate.

At camp, the toll showed on their faces and clothing: dirt-caked, sweaty, exhausted and quiet. These were crews accustomed to hard work and dangerous assignments, but the Romero Fire had become a prolonged test of endurance.

By Wednesday, more than 2,000 personnel were committed to the fire, backed by what was described at the time as the heaviest aerial attack ever mounted against a Santa Barbara County wildfire.

The old-timers’ observation finally proved correct. The fire did not cross Rincon Creek. At approximately 14,500 acres, after nine days of sustained attack, the Romero Fire was contained. It was declared under control on Saturday, Oct. 16, 1971.

What the Fire Left Behind

The Romero Fire destroyed and damaged homes, burned a large portion of the Carpinteria watershed, and left communities concerned about mudslides and flooding once winter rain arrived.

Contemporary accounts estimated losses in the millions of dollars, on top of the immense cost of the firefighting campaign.

It also reinforced a difficult lesson for every South Coast community: Firefighting skill, aircraft, bulldozers, planning and courage can limit a wildfire’s destruction, but they do not eliminate the power of dry fuel, steep terrain and sudden wind.

The fire began above Summerland and threatened Carpinteria; it was fought from the first engine response through the final air-tanker runs and hand-cut lines near Divide Peak and Rincon Creek.

Its containment reflected the work of thousands of people — local firefighters, Forest Service personnel, CDF crews, hotshots, dozer operators, pilots, support workers, volunteers and others whose names rarely entered the public record.

Part 2 returns to the Santa Monica Canyon blowup, the four men who died there while working to contain the fire, and the memorial that continues to preserve their names.