Midland School faculty and animals returned to campus after the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office lifted evacuation orders for the 2024 Lake Fire.
“By the end of the fire, we did not have any structures that burned, which was great,” Head of Midland School Hannah Nelson told the Sun. “Looking at maps, a fair bit of our land did get burned, but I don’t know the acreage yet.”
The Lake Fire ignited near Zaca Lake on July 5 and burned more than 38,000 acres over about three weeks. The Midland School, which is a 3,000-acre boarding high school on Figueroa Mountain Road, sits on the edge of the San Rafael wilderness and was right in the blaze’s path. On July 7, the school began evacuating its faculty and animals who live on campus year round, and the fire crews set up shop on campus to assist with fire suppression.
As of July 30, the Lake Fire was 92 percent contained with two areas of concern that the Los Padres Forest Service was unable to reach because it’s “very steep and dangerous,” Forest Service Public Information Officer Helen Tarbet told the Sun.
“But they are well within an area where it pretty much can’t get out. There are going to be interior pockets that are going to continue to burn out slowly, but resources will be on scene past the fire,” Tarbet said.
Figeroa, Davey Brown, and Nira campgrounds along with the area’s trail systems are closed. Miranda Pine Campground and Pine Canyon Road from Highway 166 are also closed at this time, she said on July 29. Three recreation cabins, a campground host’s trailer, a concessionaire’s truck and box trailer, and a water pump house burned during the fire; however, the campsites remain in decent shape.
“This burned in a very mosaic pattern. I remember during the Zaca Fire it burned in a mosaic pattern. It gets so windy and fire creates its own weather, there’s a lot of areas the fire did not burn,” Tarbet said.
The Forest Service began some suppression repair efforts by adding water bars on fire lines in the area to reduce the potential for soil erosion and waterway contamination by debris flow, according to the Forest Service. Heavy equipment will push large piles of dirt and vegetation over the lines with the goal of restoring the area to as close to pre-fire conditions as possible, but Tarbet anticipates it’ll be a long haul.
“There were lots and lots of miles of dozer trails where they had to cut through. That’s all going to have to be rehabbed,” she said.
Midland Head of School Nelson said that the school plans to conduct soil sampling to assess damage on its property, host the Santa Barbara County Trails Council to discuss revegetation, and coordinate restoration efforts with the Sedgwick Reserve. Nelson added that the school is also working with the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians to restore a heritage site near Lover’s Loop that experienced damage.
In the meantime, all public trails on the Midland Property are closed as the school evaluates the damage and creates an erosion prevention and reconstruction plan before the rainy season begins.
“We have more to do because we have a lot of hillsides that were burned, high intensity burns with a lot of soil [exposure],” school Director of Rangeland Conservation Regina Butala said. “We need to figure out what kind of reconstruction we need to do to prevent further erosion.”
Butala, who also directs Midland’s horse program, added that students might take part in some small restoration efforts and ground trail restoration as well, but faculty is still working out the specifics for the students’ roles when they come back in the fall.
“There’s more opportunities to incorporate connection to land and fire over time. This area hasn’t burned in a very long time so we’ll be able to integrate some of our classes and programs to monitoring regrowth and healing of the land and some science,” Butala said.
