Edhat Staff
By the edhat staff
On June 27, 1990 the Painted Cave claimed two lives and burned 5,000 acres in Santa Barbara County.
On this Wednesday evening at 6:02pm, Santa Barbara County firefighters responded to a call for a brush fire atn Highway 154 and Painted Cave Road.
It was an abnormally hot day with temperatures reaching a record 109 degrees and sundowner winds kicking up to 40 mph. Within 20 minutes of arriving on the scene, the two-acre fire reached 70-feet in the air and traveled over 2 miles. It jumped Highway 101 about an hour and forty minutes later moving into Santa Barbara neighborhoods.
The Painted Cave Fire raged for five days, destroyed 430 structures, and killed two people. Andrea Lang Gurka, age 37, died while fleeing the flames along San Marcos Pass Road and an unnamed state prisoner died while working as a firefighter.
Investigators quickly determined the fire started due to arson but it was another five years until Leonard Ross was sued for allegedly igniting the fire in an attempt to “burn out his neighbor” when the fire “got out of hand.”
Robert Bernstein put together photos from that day and created a post for the fire’s 30th anniversary. See all of his photos and read his memories from that day here.
Painted Cave Fire on June 27, 1990 (Photo: Robert Bernstein)
Hollister Ave and Nogal Drive after the Painted Cave Fire (Photo: Robert Bernstein)
Hollister and Modoc after the Painted Cave Fire (Photo: Robert Bernstein)
We were finishing the “new” Social Services building and commented to a coworker that it is “a bad day for a fire”.
It was 106 degrees in the parking lot.
I went home and mucked around for about 2 hour and flipped on the news and SBFD had taken over the parking lot where we had the conversation about fire.
Blew my mind.
Wow…Thank you ED and Robert for the pics. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t think about it anymore regularly. We lived the next left after San Antonio Creek going up the pass. Andrea was our neighbor. We usually would have been there but got caught up at my Dads, randomly looking at pictures. We were lucky that we weren’t there and were young and didn’t lose a lifetime of memories. Like most did. We lost a dog, a cat, and everything else. The people of SB were amazing. Donating everything from toothbrushes to beds. Thank you to the firefighters then and now, plus the amazing community for their help.
I was leaving work in Goleta between 5:30-6:00 and I saw a horizontal plume of smoke coming off of San Marcos Pass. I thought to myself, what an odd day to have a controlled burn? It was in the 90s and gusty winds.
I got to my apartment on upper State before it jumped 101. It was my first experience with a sundowner driven Santa Barbara fire. I thought it was miraculous that many more people did not perish.
Next to 101 on the south side there are still burned eucalyptus snags standing in the vicinity of the little league field. I’m there are still people in town who were stuck on 101 when the fire jumped the freeway.
Oh wow, do I remember this day. I was 18 and about to start UCSB in September and was at my parent’s house on Campanil Hill. At first, I thought it was fog rolling in from the ocean below, but then you could smell the acrid smoke. I went outside and it was so thick that I immediately began coughing.
At this point, ash was raining down, and I also saw what looked like the charred front page of the SB News-Press float by overhead (bad omen, perhaps? lol).
We were riveted to KEYT at this point and were in shock when we learned how quickly it had jumped the freeway (I’ll never forget when Debbie Davison announced this). As it made its way toward Hidden Valley, we began packing up and getting ready to leave. Soon after, the police came rolling around the cul de sac and barked out EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY from their PA systems. It was the most panic-induced I think I had ever felt, knowing that it was marching toward the foot of Campanil Hill and just the right wind could shoot the fire up like a flame thrower. When we left we all had water-soaked t-shirts over our mouths.
My mom, sister, brother, and I left and stayed at my mom’s friend’s house on the Mesa, but my dad and older brother stayed with hoses on the roof, constantly swatting down embers with water. At some point in the night, the fire hit the ocean breeze near Veronica Springs and was pushed back (I think). Let’s just say that we didn’t get any sleep that night.
While we were lucky, so many people suffered tremendously. Such a terrifying, sad day.
Thanks for the post!! I remember but I was young.
I lived on Old San Marcos and the Lennie Ross’s “neighbor” is a somewhat despicable litigious pain in the @ss who either sued or threatened to sue every property owner on the road whose property lines adjoined his. He purchased unbuildable lots on OSM for the sheer reason of suing adjacent land owners over their historic easements. He lost one of his biggest lawsuits. Ironically the Superior Court judge in this case also presided over the Lennie Ross trial years earlier. BTW I lost my house along with hundreds of other people.
wow…i remember this vividly. I lived on the corner of Santa Barbara and Canon Perdido, right above the Main Squeeze (now Rudys). My roommates and I got onto the roof for a better view. I remember the fire, the smoke being so heavy downtown. We had wet tshirts wrapped around our heads and covering our mouths. I watched the flames race down the mountain. My friend was near Modoc helping save horses and luckily wasn’t hurt nor were the horses and animals. This was devastating. Great photos, thank you for sharing
Those who don’t study history are destined to repeat it. Our fires are an excellent case in point.
We have lived in the Santa Barbara area since 1963. The first fire we experienced was the Coyote Fire. It burned for over 6-days and 30,000 acres. Each morning, our cars had a thin coat of ash.
That fire started when high winds pushed Edison power lines together on Coyote Road. The sparks ignited the dry grass below. High winds rapidly spread the fire.
We can continue to anguish about the fires, and spend lots of money to put them out.
Or, we can be proactive.
High tension power lines in the foothills should be relocated underground.
Likewise for the Edison wiring on phone poles. Where I live, there have been fires started because kids flew aluminized mylar kites into the 16KV power lines in the poles. Edison’s “fuses” were simply smaller gauge wire interconnects that melted, dripped molten copper to the dry grass below, and a fire started.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in 1967 established Electric Tariff Rule 20 (Rule 20 or the Tariff). Money is collected from all our electric bills to fund undergrounding of utilities.
How is Rule 20 money being spent? Why are not utilities proactively undergrounded in advance of fire season (or at least done piecemeal each year)?
There are no above ground wires in Hope Ranch or Montecito