We never thought the Thomas Fire would reach Santa Barbara, like the rest of the community. But our protocol was that we would treat a voluntary evacuation as mandatory because we have guests in our 42 cottages, the two restaurants that are sold out almost every night, and hundreds of employees.
Once that order came, every morning we would meet with the firefighters on the property and come up with a game plan. It changed every day, based on the wind conditions and relative humidity. We had so many different scenarios: Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D. No one was sleeping, and we were all drinking 10 pots of coffee a day. It was high stress. I was at the ranch for 10 straight days. When I left on Sunday, I didn’t know what day of the week it was, to be honest with you. It was nonstop.
But there was lots of downtime when they were just hanging out, everyone shooting the shit, drinking coffee, telling stories. They’d ask about the ranch and who’s stayed there. I got the sense that they all realized how special the ranch is and that they really cared about the property. They understood that it was a big responsibility and told me that they were going to do everything in their power to make sure it’s still here. The battalion chiefs would call me five times a day to explain what was happening, and they told me, “You guys are pretty much ground zero and priority number one because of the way you’re situated.”