157. tea fire

sounds weird, huh? a fire apparently started around 5:30pm today in the tea gardens area up in montecito (hilly mansion-y area of santa barbara). that means.. oprah's house! tom cruise's house! and who knows who else's mansion up there.. in some of the pics, you can see a HUGE house burning.. and the one with the palm tree on the left and the line of fire.. the dim things directly in line with the fire are HOUSES. so scary :( when we got back home and looked at the images, we watched as our pictures showed the fire getting closer.. and closer.. and closer to those houses.. then finally burn them down. i totally didn't notice until jeff brought it up.. 

we went over to jeff's 'cause we had our xbox and guitar hero over there.. and he was about to get evac'd :| the fire is pretty close to his place. scary. we went over, brought stuff back, jeff came with us. he's chilling in the living room, waiting for bryant to finish whatever he's doing so they can go get ice to make margaritas and chill. poor guy. i hope nothing happens to his place :| so scary! but.. fortunately.. my place is fine. for now. :) it's decently far away and if it ever DID get close.. there would be VERY little left of santa barbara. so let's cross our fingers, shall we? :)

PICS HERE!!
http://www.sarahsakamoto.com/teafire

NEEDLESS TO SAY, ALL IMAGES ©SARAH IZUMI SAKAMOTO, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

some pics posted just 'cause i liked how they looked :) like.. weird lens flare and stuff. on a brighter note, we got to see helicopters getting filled up with water and dropping it off over the fire up in the hills. PLUS i got to be really freakin close to a chopper when it was taking off AND landing.. man.. the wind!! it's killer! haha. i got pegged in the forehead by a decently sized chunk of wood :| that was not fun.. not to mention i got tons of dust and whatnot in my eye before reflexes kicked in and saved them. 

pic descrip:

01. the moon! :| with a huge smokey cloud over it

02. the moon again.. the green thing was just something weird my lens did. but it looks really cool, eh? like there's two moons! :)

03. people chillin' on top of their roof (near jeff's house), just watching the fire..

04. it reminded me of a christmas ornament.. and made me happy for a little bit.. until i remembered that that was fire and smoke behind it :| boo. but that was a chopper :)

05. the mansion (or other large structure).. burning. we drove to the top of a parking structure and were chilling there taking pictures.. a good 30-40 people showed up, at least another 7 photographers.. and 2-3 people with video cameras.

06. got bored.. so i took a pic of the street. pretty cool :)

07. see the faint houses to the right side? SCARY!

08. chopper chopper

09. lens doing more weird things.. they look like UFO's! hahhaa.

10. got bored.. so we wandered around.. were going to go to jack in the box but then jeff spotted a chopper (copter, helicopter, etc?) in the field of some middle school.. so the two airplane-happy boys decided to stop by and take a few pictures. i sat in the car but the photographer in me wanted to take some pictures (especially when i saw the dust clouds when they landed in the baseball field) SOOo.. yes. i managed to catch a water drop!! :)

11. water-full chopper going out to save the day! got compliments from BOTH boys on this one :) yay.

12. i got to see a triple rainbow.. if not more.. hahah. weird lens again D:

13. panorama of the fire... man :|