THE FLAMES AND THE FLOOD
Following a historic dry period from March through December of 2017, two fires sparked to life four miles apart, within 30 minutes of each other, in the hills of Ventura County. The ignitions occurred in the early evening of December 4. The flames coincided with unseasonable Santa Ana winds gusting up to 50 miles per hour. The resulting brushfires merged near Santa Paula, Calif., and then made fast progress toward Ventura. That first night hundreds of homes burned and the blaze expanded to encompass 45,000 acres. Two weeks of erratic Santa Anas pushed the inferno west and north into Santa Barbara County, scorching national forest and several coastal towns. Named after Thomas Aquinas College, located near the fire’s twin sources, with 281,893 acres burned, the Thomas Fire eventually grew to become the state’s largest wildfire on record.
On January 8, four days before the Thomas would be fully contained, the first perceptible rain in months arrived. In other instances, this may have been fortuitous. But the most significant bursts of precipitation were forecast to fall within the burn area. Due to the steep terrain of the Santa Ynez mountains and because the fire had destroyed vegetation that would have held hillsides in place (as well as the fact that wildfires chemically change soil in a way that prevents earth from retaining water), flashfloods and debris flows were expected. Both mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders went out to many residents who had only recently returned from evacuations due to fire.
