A Santa Barbara area canyon's residents are among many Californians living in harm's way in fire-prone areas

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"That's where I think it's going to come from," he says, pointing to a ridgeline from a seat on his patio.

When it does, getting out could be a nightmare. Like many rustic communities in the West, Mission Canyon is a maze of narrow, twisting roads, dead-end drives and too few exits.

From the state's earliest days, California's growth has been one endless push into the combustible wild, whether it was Gold Rush-era log cabins in the Sierra foothills, the canyon retreats of the Hollywood elite or new subdivisions sprouting on brushy Riverside County hillsides.

About 40% of the more than 12 million homes in the state are on land with a high to extreme threat of wildfire, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Most of them are not in the boondocks, but in developed areas bordering wildlands -- places like Mission Canyon, Malibu, Sierra Madre, Santa Clarita.

Every year, more houses go up in what is known as the wildland-urban interface, where development meets the flammable wild.

An analysis by U.S. Forest Service and University of Wisconsin researchers found that between 1990 and 2000, 61% of the new housing in California, Oregon and Washington -- more than 1 million homes -- was built in the interface.

In Southern California alone, the Forest Service estimates that roughly 189,000 homes were constructed in fire-prone areas from 2003 to 2007.

Wildfire losses in California have shot up dramatically as a result of such growth. In the 1960s, an average of 100 structures a year were destroyed by wildfire on lands protected by state firefighters. In the 1990s, the figure topped 300. In this decade, wind-driven firestorms have pushed the average past 1,500.

The toll will only get worse, says Bill Stewart, a former assistant deputy director of Cal Fire. "We haven't seen how bad it can be. . . . We build with wood, and we have hot, dry winds. There's no house you can say has a zero chance of ever burning."

The escalating destruction has sparked new state construction standards as well as a growing recognition of the limits of firefighting.

Some argue it is time for bolder steps: Curb building in areas of high fire danger. Close national forests to the public on days when the Santa Ana winds howl. Bury power lines in the backcountry so they don't topple in fierce winds and spark infernos, as happened last October. Require retrofitting of existing homes to make them more fire-resistant.

"I ultimately think the fire problem in Southern California is not something fire managers will solve. Land managers will solve it. That is the frontier," says Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who has studied fire in the region's shrub lands for decades.

Wildfires are not natural disasters, says Tim Duane, an associate professor of planning at UC Berkeley. "They are natural processes that become disasters because of human decisions. . . . Why was the subdivision there? Why was it spread out the way it was?"

No easy way out

Mission canyon has been a retreat for Santa Barbarans since the Spanish colonial era. The nearby mission dammed its creek for water. Locals hiked and picnicked on its slopes and established a botanical garden. After World War II, hundreds of homes were built there.

Bounded on the north by the Los Padres and on the south by Santa Barbara's city limits, the canyon has remained unincorporated county land, served by a road network established in the 1920s.

Daniel, a psychologist, grew up in the New York area, went to graduate school in the Bay Area and moved to Santa Barbara in 1985, drawn by the ocean and the weather. Five years later, in a foothill neighborhood a few miles west of Mission Canyon, he encountered a less alluring side of Southern California.

Pushed by local winds known as sundowners, the Painted Cave fire raced from the mountains to the 101 Freeway in a couple of hours. It jumped the highway and wiped out more than 600 buildings -- including three homes near his.