This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Thousands of residents of southern California fled their homes on Tuesday because of a wind-driven wildfire burning in mountains near Santa Barbara.

Santa Barbara county officials declared a “local emergency” early on Tuesday morning, as the Cave fire spread through the Los Padres national forest.

The fire had erupted on Monday afternoon in the forest and quickly spread, raising fears for the town of Goleta, north of Santa Barbara.

As many as 6,300 people were evacuated and about 2,400 structures were threatened early on Tuesday, the Santa Barbara county fire spokesman, Mike Eliason, told KEYT television.

Residents of a local mobile home park evacuated in the middle of the night, but many residents had not left the area, authorities said.

By Tuesday afternoon, about 4,000 people were allowed return to their homes.

The cause of the blaze was unknown. It blackened more than 6.5 sq miles of the rugged Santa Ynez Mountains, but most of that acreage was scorched in its first hours Monday.

Daniel Bertucelli, Santa Barbara county fire captain, told the Los Angeles Times that the area’s steep, rocky terrain was creating challenges for crews, and that firefighters were expecting increasing difficulties as winds picked up speed throughout the day.

Rudy Gruber, 79, watched the smoke and flames from the top of a hill near his house in Santa Barbara.

Despite orders to evacuate, he said he had decided not to leave because he didn’t think the fire would cross a canyon to his home. Plus, it would be tough to move his 50lb tortoise, Amstel.

Even so, he has been prepared for about a year, packing photo albums, computers and a carrier for his cat, Scooter.

Gruber, who has lived in the area since 1976, was facing his fifth fire but said he had only evacuated once, when he saw smoke in his neighborhood in 1978. He hadn’t seen any this time, so he had chosen to stay put.

“We’re better prepared than we used to be,” Gruber said. “We’ve gone through it so many times now.”

An incoming storm was expected to drop an inch of precipitation on the fire area later in the day, which could help stop the blaze. It could also create new challenges, with possible debris flow and roadways being washed out.

Fire officials said the area had not received any rain in 180 days and that the vegetation was ready to burn, causing the exponential growth in early hours. There were also some rugged areas that were too narrow for firefighters’ engines. ﻿

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A firefighter tackles the blaze west of Goleta. Photograph: Mike Eliason/AP

The threat of fires has long been a fact of life in the area – in 1990, a major wildfire in the area destroyed more than 400 homes.

But the risk has recently become more intense and more frequent. After a fire in January 2018, devastating mudslides in the Santa Barbara region ravaged the town of Montecito, killing 23 people and destroying 130 homes.

California as a whole has suffered from progressively worsening wildfire seasons in recent years, with the climate crisis exacerbating these threats and fires burning larger areas for longer periods and causing greater damage.

The fires this year in northern and southern California were marked by unprecedented blackouts, with the state utility companies proactively shutting off the power for millions when the risks of fires burning and spreading were high. The overall damage this year, however, has been significantly less severe than the previous two years.