Fire creates a cliffhanger for Big Sur

Basil Sanborn is on the phone, equal parts hope and trepidation.

Glen Oaks Motel, his family business, survived the devastation of the Basin Complex fire, which swept through this storied California outpost and shut it down for the better part of the last three weeks. Now the hard part has begun.

“All of our business and buildings are intact,” Sanborn tells the far-off caller. “We sure hope you come see us.”

How soon that can happen is question No. 1, followed in quick succession by how much of an economic blow the blaze has caused this magnet for seekers and sightseers. Scenic Highway 1 has reopened for locals, but fire officials estimate that part of the coastal route will stay off limits for everyone else at least until Sunday.

As the smoke clears and workers trickle back, business owners and local officials have begun assessing the financial damage here in the place Henry Miller called “the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look.”

Sanborn figures his motel will take a $100,000 hit this summer season. The inn, gas station, cafe and store at Ripplewood Resort next door will lose at least that much. The Ventana Inn and Spa hasn’t pegged its losses yet, but it’s not scheduled to reopen until August.

Nepenthe restaurant has probably lost more than $800,000 in gross receipts, and it’s impossible to say when -- or even if -- business will return to normal. Big Sur Bakery and Restaurant will probably lose around $70,000.

“It’s very summer-driven here -- June, July, August,” said bakery co-owner Michael Gilson, whose house was one of 26 destroyed in the fire, which was 41% contained Friday. “The three months is where you make your income. It’s devastating . . . I’m in denial.”

If anyone’s allowed a little denial, it’s Gilson, who spent Wednesday with his bookkeeper, compiling a list of vendors and figuring out payment plans. He was evacuated from the house he shares with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter with just an hour to throw their belongings in their cars. A friend offered another house; they were later evacuated from that one too.

After spending a night in the bakery, they heard from other friends that a rental house the friends owned above Ventana Inn would be available soon. “I thought, ‘God, that would be a great spot’,” he said. “That night we watched that house burn.”

Nepenthe general manager Kirk Gafill said there is “no worse time” of year for this kind of disruption to the Big Sur economy. The Basin Complex fire, which has burned more than 100,000 acres, was ignited by a lightning strike June 21.

“The third week of June is kickoff to summer,” said Gafill, sitting in the empty restaurant dining room, its panoramic views reduced to monochromatic gray -- no ocean, no sky, no horizon to slice the two. “You’re through with dads and grads, it ramps up with Fourth of July weekend, which we lost,” he said. “With the seasonality of the hospitality industry in a place like Big Sur, you’re doing three times the business in the peak season . . . It’s having a tremendous impact.”

Gafill is head of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce. His grandparents founded the restaurant in 1949. And he’s the first to point out that doing business in a place with seasonal cycles of wildfire and flood means planning for the possibility of a six-month closure. Already the thought of winter mudslides looms large.

Most smaller businesses don’t have the luxury of building in a six-month cushion. And workers, many fear, will bear the brunt of the hardship. But people here toss out the names of local disasters the way others talk about sports franchises: the Marble-Cone fire of ‘77, the Rat Creek fire of ‘85, the El Nino mudslides of ’98 that closed the highway for months. “There’s a folklore,” Gafill said. “You always wonder: Are you up to the test? Amazingly, every generation has been up to the test.”

In a testament to the region’s famed grit -- Sanborn’s mother has a hat from 1998 with the slogan “I’m a Big Sur Self-Sustainer” -- a local group has raised around $200,000 and is distributing it to local workers to help them through the tough time.

The Coast Property Owners Assn. has already given nearly all of it away, said Ned Callihan, an association member and architect. The group is planning a series of fundraisers to benefit the region and has launched a fundraising website, bigsurfirerelief.org.

Supreet Gill, a 26-year-old yoga instructor and gardener, handed in her paperwork for the group’s assistance at a Tuesday night community meeting. She’d had no paid work since the fires hit, and she’s grateful for a $300 grant -- even though it won’t go far in this isolated, pricey area. But she has no plans to leave.

“You really have to be here to understand” the draw of the rugged coastline, she said. “I feel like nature is alive.”

Fire or no, it still is, at least along the stretch of Highway 1 that beckons tourists from around the world.

Depending on the vagaries of fire, wind and marine layer, famous vistas can blur to mere memories of mountains or pop into high relief. Green treetops are largely intact, although underbrush has burned away.

Once the fire is contained and Highway 1 reopens, “the hard work will be getting the word out that it’s a safe place to be, that it’s beautiful and still a spectacular place to visit,” said Janet Lesniak, general manager of the Big Sur River Inn.

Not only that, Lesniak said as she surveyed her ash-specked property, visitors will “never get a better greeting. We’ll be so happy to see them.”

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maria.laganga@latimes.com