Inside the Big Sur Roadhouse, as ashes rain down outside, Celia and Ray Sanborn are taking shelter with their family after losing their Pfeiffer Ridge home last night.
Celia reports that she was awakened by smoke sometime near midnight, and after waking her husband, went outside to assess where the fire was and how much time there was to save possessions.
As she made her way down the driveway, amid embers falling from the sky, she came upon a “wall of flames 30 to 40 feet tall.”
She rushed back to the house and she and Ray quickly piled into their truck and drove uphill, away from the fire.
To wake up any neighbors still sleeping, Celia says she laid on the horn the entire time.
“We’ve lived here 40 years, and I never thought this could happen,” Ray says. “I never suspected it would come like that. We had no time. If [Celia] didn’t wake up, who knows.”
The Sanborns say they weren’t able to save a single possession—Ray didn’t even have his wallet.
They estimate that around 15-20 homes have burned on Pfeiffer Ridge, including the home of Martha Karstens, chief of the Big Sur Volunteer Fire Brigade. The Sanborns say that Karstens’ home was the first to burn.
The Sanborns had spent the night worried about one of their neighbors who stayed on to save his house, thinking the worst when they heard it had burned. But they did see him this morning, and he relayed that he left at the last moments.
Ray says his “face was black,” and a photo of the man’s Audi showed that his taillight covers had completely melted off.
For additional reports on the Big Sur, visit the Weekly news blog.
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While the main haunts along Highway 1 in Big Sur stand eerily empty, rumors have consumed that void, as those on hand and throughout the wider community speculate on how the fire started and whose houses were consumed.
The Weekly confirmed from neighbors that restauranteurs Gaston and Sheila Georis lost their house. Same sad news for the home of local photographer Kodiak Greenwood, who partly made his name documenting the last major Big Sur fires.
Gabe Skvor has more from Big Sur Roadhouse: