On June 27, 1990 the Painted Cave claimed two lives and burned 5,000 acres in Santa Barbara County.
On this Wednesday evening at 6:02 pm, Santa Barbara County firefighters responded to a call for a brush fire at Highway 154 and Painted Cave Road.
It was an abnormally hot day with temperatures reaching a record 109 degrees and sundowner winds kicking up to 40 mph. Within 20 minutes of arriving on the scene, the two-acre fire reached 70-feet in the air and traveled over 2 miles. It jumped Highway 101 about an hour and forty minutes later moving into Santa Barbara neighborhoods…