Ray Ford: The fire that never happened

Ray Ford: The fire that never happened

On a bone dry November afternoon in 2008 a group of college students hiked up a Montecito hillside and snuck onto a private viewpoint known as the Tea Gardens. They were there to party, and though they were hardly the first to do so, my guess is they were the last. They gathered around a bonfire until late into the night, and as they left, they covered over the fire’s ashes thinking they had put it out. They were wrong. When Sundowner winds arri…