Special Cover Story: Moments, observations and information from the most damaging Big Sur fire in decades.

Something unwelcome awoke Celia Sanborn just before midnight.

She could smell it, wafting into her home: the unmistakable smell of burning. She alerted her husband Ray and rushed out of their Pfeiffer Ridge home, trying to get a read on how close it was.

As she made her way to the end of the driveway, burning embers fell from the sky. Then she confronted a sight that stopped her in her tracks: a wall of flames she estimates at 30 to 40 feet tall.

There would be no time for saving things.

Celia ran back to the house to tell Ray it was time to leave. Now. The couple raced to their cars, jumped in and sped off uphill, away from the flames, with Celia laying on the horn the whole way to alert sleeping neighbors.

They drove to pick up Celia’s mother, Helen Morgenrath, whose home is also on Pfeiffer Ridge, where she’s lived for decades.

It was hours before dawn on Monday, Dec. 16. As the Sanborns and Morgenrath found shelter in the Big Sur Roadhouse later that afternoon, which is owned by Ray and Celia’s son Basil Sanborn, ashes rained down outside and smoke blanketed the valley. The Sanborns escaped with nothing from their house, a small rustic cabin that Ray built himself in 1973. Even his wallet burned.

But concerns for the community trumped material concerns. They spent the night worrying about a neighbor who had stayed on to save his home, later learning it was lost. Their fears for his safety were allayed when they saw him later Monday morning. His face was black. The tail light covers on his car had completely melted. But he was here, albeit without a house.

In a night full of surprises, the biggest for Ray was the speed with which the fire moved.

“I never thought this could happen,” he says. “We had no time. If [Celia] didn’t wake up, who knows.”

~ ~ ~

The Pfeiffer Fire was first reported to Cal Fire at 11:50pm Sunday.

“I’m on Pfeiffer Ridge in Big Sur, and I think there’s a fire somewhere, I can’t tell where it is… I think it’s down the hill, I can’t tell in the dark.”

“I’m on Pfeiffer Ridge in Big Sur, and I think there’s a fire somewhere, I can’t tell where it is,” says Patricia Holt in a 911 call. “I think it’s down the hill,” she says. “I can’t tell in the dark.” (For more on events, including slideshows and the 911 recording, visit www.mcweekly.com/bigsurfire.)

“The fire sounded like an animal, like a roar,” says Chelsea Davey, a Weekly ad exec and Big Sur native who arrived early Monday morning to help save her family’s nearby Sycamore Canyon home. (For more on that effort, see Spin, p. 21.)

Other spooky sounds filled the night. From 2am on, Big Sur resident Levi DeKeyrel, a graphic designer at the Weekly, reports hearing the unnerving booms of exploding propane tanks while sitting outside on Apple Pie Ridge.

“The tops would pop, and all of the gas would shoot out, 20 to 30 feet in the air,” he says.

The sight, he adds, was like a flamethrower, the sound like a jet engine.

By Monday morning, at least 180 firefighters battled the blaze from various regional fire departments. Cal Fire’s initial report that morning was that the fire was burning 300-400 acres with zero-percent containment, and had damaged at least two buildings. Another 50 buildings, maybe more, had already been evacuated. They also reported the roads west of Highway 1 – those leading up to and around Pfeiffer Ridge – were closed to all traffic except firefighters.

The atmosphere in the valley on Monday was tense, as arriving firefighters tried to get a handle on what they were facing, and local residents struggled to get accurate information about the fire’s path. A persistent haze of low-hanging smoke obscured the surrounding peaks. The thumping of invisible helicopters made the valley feel like a war zone. For those past the roadblocks, that feeling was intensified by the constant snow of ash that coated their bodies, their cars and the landscape around them.

By Wednesday morning, Dec. 18, fire crews continued to battle along steep and often treacherous terrain, and aerial reconnaissance of the area has been hindered by heavy smoke. Fortunately winds have stayed low; Los Padres National Forest spokesman Andrew Madsen reported he was confident the fire would be brought under control soon. Continued favorable weather conditions, he said, will help give firefighters “the space we need get it boxed in and pin it down.”

Yet, on the InciWeb.org website, the federal government portal that tracks disasters like fires and floods, the Pfeiffer Fire was described late Tuesday night as “running” and “erratic.”

“The fire sounded like an animal, like a roar.”

While wind has not been a factor in driving the fire, fuel has. The area affected last burned in 1907, according to Martha Karstens, the chief of the Big Sur Volunteer Fire Brigade whose own Pfeiffer Ridge home was among the first to go. The terrain is thick with a fuel-heavy understory that comes from years of fire suppression. Madsen says the fire has actually reversed direction in several places to move back into brush and trees it didn’t completely burn on the first pass.

“You’re talking some really dense vegetation,” Madsen says. “There’s so much to burn.”

Madsen adds firefighters aren’t accustomed to fighting vegetation fires this time of year, a reminder 2013 has been a record dry year. The National Weather Service reports that Big Sur has received only 7.27 inches of rain in 2013. The historic average is 44.88.

Still, Madsen is optimistic. “We want to get it done soon so we can get home for Christmas.”

As of Wednesday morning, that optimism seemed well founded. Officials reported the fire had burned 843 acres – containment was at 20 percent, and firefighters expect full containment by 6pm Friday, Dec. 20, weather permitting.

Most of the fire couldn’t be seen in the valley due to smoke, but along Highway 1, just across the river from Big Sur Lodge, firefighters from Gabilan Conservation Camp battled smoldering redwoods in the place confirmed as the fire’s point of origin. On Monday afternoon, members of the crew, which is run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said they had been working since 2am, and that redwoods were “falling every five minutes.” Moments later, a giant redwood exploded with a blistering pop, thundered to the ground and careened down the hillside as crew members scrambled to avoid its path.

The cause of the fire was still under investigation as of Wednesday morning, but when asked about a rumor that it started from an illegal campfire near the Buzzard’s Roost Trail, Madsen indicated there might be some truth to it.

“You’re getting pretty warm there,” he says. “They’ve got that whole area roped off.”

Karstens, the volunteer chief, had left her home to help battle the blaze; when she learned it had overtaken her property, she stayed on to help lead. Addressing the media at 5pm Monday outside of Big Sur Station, she appeared weary from the battle, but a resilience carried through her voice.

"I walked out the door to go to what I thought was a fire somewhere else, and there was ashes and sparks going right by my front door.”

“[My volunteers] did such a great job, and busted their butts trying to save my home, and many others up there,” she says. “When you see on the news other homes burning down in other fires, you sympathize, but when it happens to you…

“It still has not sunk in. I just haven’t absorbed it all yet. I walked out the door to go to what I thought was a fire somewhere else, and there was ashes and sparks going right by my front door.”

Dec. 17, Madsen relayed that Karstens was still vigilant: “I can’t believe she’s still out here.”

~ ~ ~

Of all the things Pfeiffer Ridge resident and professional photographer Kodiak Greenwood thought he’d be doing on his birthday, this was not it. He’s talking to a reporter about how his sophisticated camera and computer equipment – some $50,000 worth – burned up while he was collecting a piece of scanning equipment in Oregon.

But suddenly, that was his birthday, on Tuesday. And suddenly, his house was a pile of ash.

He would have to sift through the soot to find it got hot enough to crack his Big Sur jade.

“There’s nothing left,” he says. “It burned like a furnace.”

It also pulverized prints of arresting and award-winning photos he took of the 2008 Basin Complex Fire, as he and lifelong friends illegally and heroically set a back burn to save Apple Pie Ridge and its many homes.

“I was bummed out I wasn’t here to fight,” he says.

But even in the wake of his loss, he recognizes the opportunity for a community to get come closer. His neighbors will certainly bond over shared loss and similar devastation.

That includes Natalie Van Allen. She’s experienced her share of personal disasters, losing a husband and a child, so her recent Facebook post carried that much more intensity.

“My dad’s house, where I was born and raised, burned to the ground, early this morning. My dad barely made it out alive.”

“DEVASTATED. CRUSHED. ADRENALINE,” she wrote. “My dad’s house, where I was born and raised, burned to the ground, early this morning. My dad barely made it out alive.” (For more on the Facebook factor in the disaster, see www.mcweekly.com/bigsurfire).

Other stories: Esalen teacher Deborah Medow had survived the loss of one home to fire, and now she’s lost a second, one where she had lived in for more than 20 years. Beach Boy singer-guitarist Al Jardine’s landmark property, where he maintains a recording studio, was in danger. Myra and Drew Goodman of Earthbound Farm fame lost a home as well, just a week after selling their famed company.

At the Tuesday community meeting, officials announced 14 homes and 22 total structures were lost. A correction Wednesday amended that, saying all 22 were residences, as they included trailer homes.

Some eyewitnesses to Pfeiffer Ridge think that’s conservative.

“It’s way more than that,” said a citizen firefighter who requested anonymity.

That’s part of the swirl of information and misinformation that accompanies the chaos. One minute you’re told your heart home is leveled, the next it’s saved. Two Mickey Muennig-designed homes, those of Gaston and Sheila Georis and Barklie Henry, were reported burned and then later emerged intact. “Looks like it didn’t burn,” Gabe Georis, Gaston and Sheila’s son, said Tuesday night. “You never know until you go.”

While 22 buildings did burn, officials reported 24 were saved. As this goes to press, stories continue to filter in of airdrops in the nick of time and clever fire cuts protecting Clear Ridge homes. Zero lives – firemen or otherwise – have been lost.

~ ~ ~

Last Saturday night, a group of South Coast friends adjourned to a barn on the expansive Morgenrath Pfeiffer Ridge property for an annual Christmas candle-dipping party.

A night later, a handful of those ridge-dwelling locals were at Fernwood drinking beer and playing ping pong, when another local burst in around midnight, yelling “Fire!”

She could’ve yelled “Redwoods!” and gotten a similar response. Locals here are accustomed to fire. It was a cold December. In the middle of the night. They shrugged.

But she persisted, and they soon saw, from the flats at Pfeiffer State Park, a ghoulish light in the dark above that told them this was bad. Propane tanks started their spooky explosions. The group made for their fire protective layers in their homes on Apple Pie Ridge.

Another piece of gear awaited there: a beat-up water tender someone had donated in the wake of the last major blaze, the Basin Complex Fire, when it nearly swallowed that storied community of Apple Pie houses whole. Trey Klopp and John Hyland jumped in and drove the tender across the valley.

By the time Cyrus Bell, Tyson Curtis and Matt Peterson got into their boots and barreled up toward Pfeiffer Ridge, it was 3am and the houses they aimed to save were rimmed by fire. The barn they had so peacefully sat in, sipping and dipping, was also ready to go up too.

“It was a war zone. It was raining sparks. Fireballs on you constantly. And it’s fucking hot, and smoke is intense."

The group, joined by residents Aengus Wagner, Jali Morgenrath, Tevye Morgenrath, Heather Lamas, Basil Sanborn, Ken Wright and others, swung axes and shovels into the brush to break the fire’s momentum. A high-pressure pump from the pool led to two heavy hoses. They dragged the thick hoses full of water into position so more structures could be doused. Then dragged them to new and advancing edges of flame. They pointed the tender’s hoses and another water truck at other flare-ups.

“It was a war zone,” Peterson says. “It was raining sparks. Fireballs on you constantly. And it’s fucking hot, and smoke is intense. All those guys on the end of hoses had burnt eyes, and were sick from smoke inhalation.”

Nine of 10 structures on the property were saved. There would be more clarity and greater detail to this episode, but at press time, participants were busy making supply runs to town – eyedrops to relieve smoke-battered eyes were at the top of the list – delivering sandwiches and snuffing flare-ups. The battle, and the fire, rage on.

~ ~ ~

Even if it did awake Celia Sanborn at midnight with a 40-foot wall of flame, a fire in Big Sur is not a surprise. But its winter timing is. And for many, its speed and intensity are surprising too. Given the amount of tinder-box buildup, though, that part shouldn’t be.

That was the gist of comments heard ever so quietly around the meetings in Big Sur.

“Some of the locals are saying it’s a good thing for the area to burn,” Madsen says. In other words, fire is a necessary part of the forest’s cycle, and Big Sur is nothing if not a forest. Decades of suppression make not for a matter of if fire will come, but a matter of when.

“Some of the locals are saying it’s a good thing for the area to burn.”

With controlled burns risky in an area of steep hillsides rich with vegetation – not to mention dotted with historic homes – what are Big Sur residents to do outside of moving? The Morgenrath home had a pool that helped stave off the fire; fire tenders like Apple Pie’s were also critical to rescue efforts.

Locals will not be surprised when fire comes again. They will be better prepared. They will not be surprised by friction with law enforcement blocking paths home, or by Cal Fire heroics and citizen firefighting victories against looming flames.

And they will not be surprised that even as it traumatizes, displaces and damages, fire purifies and pulls closer.

“We see our community come together,” Greenwood says. “It is a special thing.”

“My house just burned down, but I still love fire.”

He sees his birthday timing as more symbolic than ironic.

“It’s a new beginning,” he says.

Still more surprising, he continues to treasure fire’s place in the Big Sur existence, saying, “My house just burned down, but I still love fire.”

It took away the Edward Weston and Ansel Adams silver prints his dad gave him, the charcoal sketches from his great grandma, but it didn’t take his artistic inheritance.

“That artist gene that seems to be in every generation of my family, it’s still alive,” he says. “The fire can’t take that away.”

Just like suppression can’t take fire from the landscape.

Like many longtime locals, Ray Sanborn, homeless but seemingly at peace, seems to understand that.

“Up here, you can’t pick your fire,” he says. “We were just in the wrong spot.”