On the evening of Monday, January 8, Abe Powell and his family left their creek-side home in Montecito for the safety of a private residence on West Mountain Drive, away from steep mountainsides scorched bare by the Thomas Fire. A few hours later, Powell remembered, the pounding rain unleashed rockfalls that echoed violently like the clash of colliding billiard balls. Then, in a nearby canyon, a torrent of debris snapped a 22-inch high-pressure natural gas line. “All of a sudden,” he said, “there’s a plume of fire shooting up into the sky. You could see these pulsing flames from Gibraltar Road to Carpinteria. I thought, 'Oh, lord, we’re really in for it.'”
For the past five years, Powell has served on the elected Board of Directors of the Montecito Fire Protection District. He takes public safety very seriously, and when firestorms and rainstorms bear down, friends, family, and followers turn to him for reliable information and prudent advice. In that respect, he’s been voluntarily on the clock since early December, when the lit fuse of the Thomas Fire culminated in the deadly mudflows that would change Montecito forever.
Earlier this week, the Santa Barbara Independent caught up with Powell to reflect on the disaster.