Into the Fire

It was 1990 and the bottom had fallen out of the aerospace industry, leaving little work for contract engineers like me. After a couple years, work at Heath Tecna’s Lav Mod Center had died down, so I took a job back at Tracor, the MRO center in Santa Barbara, and place of my previous post, “My Italian Beauty on State Street.” My son Kelly had recently turned one and Janice was pregnant with Ryan. There were no jobs in Seattle but I was able to hook on at Tracor for some non-descript interior mod they had. I found a modest furnished apartment off State St. and east of Five Points Shopping Mall, about five miles from the airport in Goleta. I didn’t have, or really need, a car. I would ride my bike to work and back every day. But, this was another one of those contract jobs where they said there was overtime to get you to show up, and when you got there it was only a 40-hour work week. As a job shopper I couldn’t make any good money without overtime because I had a house back home and living expenses where I was working. Without too many other prospects I decided to wait a bit before quitting. I had been there for a few weeks when I arranged for Janice and Kelly to come for a long weekend.

On Wednesday afternoon, June 27, 1990, I had finished work and was headed home on my bike. It was a record 109º that day with humidity an incredibly low 8%. Up in the hills, the heat was fueling 50+ mph northerly winds the locals called sundowners. I was almost home when I thought I noticed a puff of smoke by Highway 154 at the top of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Less than two hours later I found out how right I was. Someone had deliberately set a brush fire at the top on Painted Cave Road.

The alarm for the fire came in at 6pm. It only took a few minutes for the winds to whip the flames into an uncontrolled frenzy. Soon the fire and the winds were feeding off each other, shooting flames well over 100 feet into the air. By 7:45, less than two hours later, the fire had done the inconceivable and leaped the divided six lane freeway of US Highway 101. It had already blown 5 miles down the mountains and destroyed 400 homes. Now it was racing through town to the ocean with nothing to stop it. My apartment was on the east side of Highway 101, about a half-mile out of the fire’s fastest moving path. By shear luck it had not yet gotten to my building. I would periodically go outside to check where it was headed. Chunks of burning debris were whipping through the air and the smoke and ash were so thick it obscured any remaining daylight. The damp cloth over my face did almost nothing to stop me from coughing or my eyes from burning. A couple blocks away I could see trees going up like matchsticks and others spontaneously exploding into flame from the heat. It reminded me of the eerie skies during the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1980. A former Navy Seal said it reminded him of the aftermath of napalm attacks in Vietnam.

At 9:30 I called Janice. “Have you seen the news?” I asked.

“Yes. What’s happening?”

“Well, it’s unbelievable. The fire is about two blocks from my apartment. Trees are going up like matchsticks and I don’t know if I’ll have an apartment in the morning.”

“What?!”

 “It’s already jumped the freeway. So don’t get on that plane tomorrow until I call you.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. I put some stuff in a backpack so I can hightail it out of here if I have to. I’ll just head south until I’m out of range I guess. I’ll call you when I know more.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“I love you, too. I’ll call you soon.”

She was scared. I was nervous – really nervous. I had stuffed a backpack with essentials and was ready to hop on my bike and ride out of there in an instant – where to exactly I had no idea. The thought of trying to outrun a wildfire on a bicycle wasn’t exactly a great plan. I sat for two more long hours before the wind inexplicably changed direction around midnight, stopping the fire’s march to the sea and saving my apartment.

In all, more than 600 homes and buildings were burned to the ground. The fire had burned so hot rocks and masonry were cracked, and there were only piles of black ash where buildings once stood. Some homes were miraculously saved when the wind-whipped fire randomly jumped over them to get to the next home, leaving a few small, lonely green islands in the black desolation. But everything it did swallow was now part of nothing but miles and miles of charred, ashen moonscape. As if the visual reminders weren’t shocking enough, the stench of hot ash and scorched remains hung in the air for days. Amazingly only one person died, but several people from work lost everything. It would become known as the Painted Cave Fire, one of the most devastating in California history. Ten years later they caught the guy who set it when he stupidly sued the county for harassment for investigating him. The county countersued in civil court to gain a judgment. They knew they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him criminally, but when he opened the door in civil court they were able to present what they had and it was enough to get a ruling for damages.

Janice and Kelly arrived at Santa Barbara Airport the next day. We rented a car from a little local place for the weekend and had a wonderful time. We had dinner a couple of times at one of my main haunts, the Beachside Bar & Grill at the end of the Goleta Beach parking lot. It was less than half a mile south of the airport at the Goleta Beach pier where the bike path scurried up the hill to UCSB. It was a nice little oasis. We also drove through some of the burned out areas. That was very sobering. But when they boarded the plane on that sunny Sunday afternoon, I will never forget the look on their faces, especially Kelly, when they waved goodbye from the top of the boarding stairs. I was so sad. I have never felt more stabbed in the heart, and the intensity of it took me by complete surprise. An older woman standing next to me saw it on my face, gently rested a hand on my arm and gave me a reassuring smile. “It’ll be alright,” she said.

When my children were less than a year old, I would often look them in their eyes and feel them look right back into my soul. It was as if I had granted them an opening and they would look and tell me, It’s okay. I see your faults, I see who you are, I see the good in you, and I love you for all of it. It’s why I chose you.

If there was anything that made me feel like I was letting my children down, it was moments like the one at the Santa Barbara airport. That was not the kind of father I wanted to be, so I had to make a choice.

A few weeks later I quit and came home, but not before I had arranged for another shopper to come take my place. I had met Kenny at LMC, and I knew he had a family and could use the work. He seemed like the logical guy to offer the job.

At Northwest Technical Plastics, Don Morris was VP Engineering (uh-o, a planner masquerading as an engineer). Craig Thomson, an old shopper buddy I first met at KME, and John Fischer, who was in Finance, were also there. Craig told Don I was available and that’s how I got on. We tolerated the place. Management-wise it was a real mess. We bastardized the company initials to call it things like NTP – Not Too Professional, or Northwest Technical Spastics, or Neanderthal Tooling Practices, or Next Time, Promise. Besides Don, they had a group of ethically challenged managers, including the owner who had inherited the business when his father died. He looked every bit like the rumors he was hooked on horse racing and cocaine.

Don Morris was still his completely narcissistic old self. His primary management technique was to pit people against each other and let them argue about decisions while he smiled and watched. The more contentious an argument got, the bigger he smiled. He thought that was how you got to good outcomes. I think he only did it because he was technically incapable of listening to the merits of each side and making a management decision on his own. That way, he could always blame a subordinate for problems.

My undoing there was reporting our director of engineering to the company president for falsifying FAA flammability test reports. That was a felony and could have resulted in the immediate shut down of NTP. Our boss had asked Craig and I to sign reports we had not witnessed. We did it once because we had experience with the material and knew it would pass. The second time he told us to sign, I said no. I wasn’t going to make a habit of this and I wasn’t going to sign for materials I hadn’t seen tested. Craig and I talked about it, but I was the one who ended up sticking his neck out. I couldn’t tolerate shit like that. I walked across the street and into the president’s office. I told him what was happening, didn’t make any threats, just told him how serious this was. In other words, he needed to discipline the guy and set him straight. So, what happened? Within four hours I was fired. I thought about going to the FAA, but I didn’t have any of the documents in my possession, so I decided against it.

Would I do it again? Yeah, I would. It wasn’t going to be the last time I was fired for doing what I thought was right. That director of engineering eventually became an FAA DER out of the Los Angeles District Office. If only they knew the truth. Even now, the aerospace industry is full of snakes in the grass like these guys. You have to be careful whom you trust. In the end, NTP ended up burying itself and AIM Aviation bought the resulting fire sale. That was how John Fischer came to run AIM Auburn, and TTF Aerospace came to set up an alliance with them after 9/11 (see my post, “The 9/11 Adventures of an Aerospace Startup”). You never know who will become your biggest future ally, so it’s best to never burn bridges. Bridge burning is usually short satisfaction at best, unless it’s a consequence of doing the right thing or protecting yourself from a nasty outcome – like jail time.

* FYI, I have changed the names of people to protect the innocent and otherwise avoid litigation-happy jerks.