In Santa Barbara fire zone, ‘everybody’s affected now’

SANTA BARBARA —  Denise Cutbirth and her three teen daughters, two Australian shepherds and a chinchilla named Chinny were on their third day in a two-bedroom suite at Motel 6, which they have taken to calling Noah’s Ark.

David Caffo and his partner, Thom Zimerle, opted for the luxury of the Biltmore Hotel, which knocked its rate down to $250 a night for fire refugees, more than half off the usual cost.

Other than the steep discount, it was hard to tell that anything was out of the ordinary. The seaside hotel had little of the smoke and haze that has settled over much of Santa Barbara, and well-groomed bellhops quietly tended to arriving guests.

David Salvia and Berri Bottomley, meanwhile, ended up at a Red Cross shelter hastily set up at UC Santa Barbara late Thursday. After a night of restless sleep, Salvia, a “wandering minstrel” in the 1960s, sat on his cot strumming the Beatles’ “I’ll Be Back” on his beloved Guild F312 guitar.

As the Jesusita fire continued its fickle leap across the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, the number of people ordered from their homes grew to more than 30,500.

Authorities said that the mass evacuation -- roughly a third of the city’s population-- was unprecedented in Santa Barbara history. An additional 29,000 people were warned late Friday to get ready to evacuate in case unpredictable winds pushed the flames in new directions.

“Everybody’s affected now because either you’ve been evacuated or you have someone whose been evacuated in your home,” said Cutbirth, who was picking up clothes, towels and food boxes in the tiny room.

Evacuation orders have become routine for residents of the greater Santa Barbara area, who have seen three major wildfires in the hills above their homes in the last year.

But last year’s fires near Goleta and Montecito sent only a handful of families to shelters. Most opted to stay with friends or family, or in hotels.

This time, as the fire stretched into its fourth day and expanded it boundaries, hundreds of displaced residents have shown up at shelters.

Dos Pueblos High School filled to its 200-person capacity Thursday night as the fire started new wind-whipped runs on both its eastern and western borders, said Red Cross official Mike Shea.

By 11 p.m., refugees were redirected to a new shelter in a recreation center at UC Santa Barbara, Shea said. By Friday afternoon, more than 600 people had signed up to stay there.

Salvia arrived with Bottomley, his longtime companion, about 11 p.m., after they dropped off their cat at a shelter.

Bottomley said they spent much of the night trying to sleep as the cavernous gym filled with new arrivals, many of them elderly. “There weren’t enough cots so they asked the younger people to give them up,” she said. “The man next to us slept sitting up in his mother’s wheelchair so she could have a cot.”

Salvia grabbed his guitar as the couple headed out the door.

“I’ve had it since 1969,” he said. “I didn’t want to lose it.”

Dennis Leidall and his wife, Jessica, tried to keep their three young children happy as they registered at the shelter. Leidall, a manager for a entrepreneurial technology program at the university, took his family to his office in the middle of the night after they were evacuated from their home on Turnpike Road.

They slept on the floor in sleeping bags, with their yellow lab settling down under his desk, Leidall said. The Red Cross set up a separate facility for the handicapped and elderly with special needs at the UCSB campus.

Officials restricted public access to the site but said they were providing specialized medical care.

Those not in shelters fanned out to hotels or bunked with family and friends.

At the Motel 6 on State Street, front-desk clerk Patty Munoz said she was bombarded with calls late Thursday as the mandatory evacuations grew. On Friday, the hotel, which allows pets, was filled to capacity.

“We had some people in tears,” she said. “They were desperate because they didn’t want to leave behind pets.”

Amanda de Lucia had four dogs and four cats to accommodate when she, her partner, Viena Zeitler, and her mother, Jan Cloud, were ordered to leave their Mountain Drive home on Tuesday, the night the fire broke out.

Nancy Johnson, a friend, agreed to house the entire menagerie. A marketing executive for the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens, Johnson had also taken them in six months earlier when the Tea fire near Montecito displaced them.

“We still had our important things in boxes, so we just loaded everything in the car, put the animals on leashes and drove over,” de Lucia said Friday from Johnson’s one-bedroom condo near East Beach.

De Lucia and Zeitler have been sleeping in sleeping bags in the studio, while Cloud sleeps on the couch. After the first night, de Lucia took most of the animals to shelters.

For now they are spending their days following the fire coverage on TV and the Internet, eager to learn when they might be able to return home. De Lucia said she’s not sure if her home is still there.

Still, they feel lucky that they have a place to stay.

“I talked to three people in the grocery store today who are in their second place to stay because they were evacuated from the first home they went to,” Cloud said.

At the fully booked Biltmore, Karen Earp, the hotel’s general manager, said a third of the 207 rooms were occupied by people who had been forced out of their homes. And there is a waiting list.

“They just want to make sure they are safe and secure with their families,” Earp said.

Caffo, who works in finance at the hotel, said he’s been staying there since Tuesday night, when he and his partner were ordered to leave their home in Mission Canyon. The stay has been “fantastic,” he said.

Thursday night, about 30 cars were lined up in the driveway of Bacara Resort up the coast from Santa Barbara, said John Davies, a public affairs consultant who works with the resort and who is also an evacuee staying there.

Close to 500 evacuees were staying at the hotel, taking up about 224 of its roughly 300 rooms, Davies said. The hotel was completely booked and, like the Biltmore, has a waiting list.

“It feels ironic to be in such a nice place when there’s such a tragedy going on,” Davies said.

At the Montecito Inn, manager Jim Copus said panicked residents started calling Thursday night as flames encroached on Montecito. About half of the Charlie Chaplin-built hotel’s 61 rooms were taken up by evacuees.

Copus said he saw familiar faces, those of people who stayed there during last year’s Tea fire.

Most evacuees were glued to televisions in their rooms, mostly ordering room service for meals, he said.

Authorities on Friday could not say when evacuated residents might return home.

“It’s a waiting game,” Johnson said. “We’re a community, and people will really do everything they can to help each other out.”

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catherine.saillant@latimes.com

Times staff writer Victoria Kim contributed to this report.