Evan Skei arrived in La Conchita 90 minutes after the mud did. The 30-year-old Montecito firefighter, certified in urban search and rescue, was among those summoned to the disaster area on the afternoon of Jan. 10. Eyewitnesses had watched in stunned horror as the roaring hill chewed up houses and people before it came to an uneasy halt.

On the way to the scene, Skei overheard the raw emotion in the voices of battalion chiefs who had responded in the minutes after the slide on the radio.

Upon arrival, Skei strapped on his helmet and with his colleagues began to dig atop the 30-foot-high mound of mud.

Before the slide, he had worn different hats in La Conchita. He was a resident, a neighbor and a friend.

Now, he was all at once a victim and a rescuer.

Early on, Skei saw the wall of mud had skirted his own home on the eastern edge of town. But soon he was digging on top of the houses of neighbors Vanessa Bryson, Dan Powell, Danielle McCleery and her husband, Ryan. At that time the fate of all of them was unknown to him.

In his six years as a paramedic, he's seen good people die. And he had watched as good things happened to bad people.

But on Monday, it was personal. Although he'd been a guest in the homes buried beneath the mud, nothing he saw atop what rescue crews called "The Pile" made sense.

He came upon canvas and bamboo and figured it was a sailboat. Days later, he realized it was the teepee neighbor Charly Womack had moved into to free space in his home for the Wallet family, who were going through tough times. Womack died in the disaster.

After Skei had worked on the pile a few hours, a Ventura County rescuer called for an "all quiet." He heard a muffled sound from under the mud.

The crew dug steadily through 6 feet of debris and discovered resident Diane Hart, seriously injured but alive.

Rescue crews were ordered off the pile at 9 p.m. Monday. A steady rain had rendered it likely to slip farther.

It was only as he tried to sleep on a cot at Ventura County Fairgrounds that night that his situation played out in his head.

"I was trying to get my arms around what was happening," he told me, 10 days after the catastrophe.

The Thousand Oaks native had cast about for a career. He'd been a welder and a graphic artist. He took an emergency medical course to be prepared for whatever and ended up falling in love with the discipline.

He enrolled in the Oxnard College Regional Fire Academy and was hired by the Montecito Fire Department in 2001.

There was no way he could afford a home in Santa Barbara on his firefighter's pay. And he didn't want to live far from the city he served.

With its black-tie views on a blue-collar budget, La Conchita appealed to him.

It has been painted as a hippie enclave, but its population includes business owners, an emergency room nurse and other professionals.

His neighbors came out to greet him the day he moved in. They invited him to barbecues and to surf with them.

Now, as his sleepless night ground on, he wondered if officials would red tag the whole community.

He had always known the hill would give eventually. His street sits at the toe of an earlier slide. But he never in his wildest imagination thought it would slide as far as it did.

He rents a spare room in his house to a geologist. They used to joke: "Is the house still above ground?"

Skei toiled atop the pile for three more days. No one else was pulled out alive.

He was on duty when Vanessa Bryson's body was found. His three other friends managed to escape.

He was never prouder to be a firefighter. Not once did anyone working on the pile complain, he said. He developed an immense respect for the urban search and rescue teams of the Ventura and Los Angeles county fire departments.

"As a victim and a responder, I believe it could not have gone any better."

These days, he's housesitting for a friend and trying to figure out his next move.

Mornings before Jan. 10, he delighted in the view from his bedroom of a horse pasture and the oil island. Now there is a debris pile where that view used to be.

Skei wants to know more about what it would really take to shore up the cliff above La Conchita. He mistrusts estimates of $150 million to make the town safe.

But unless the hill is secured, Skei doubts he will return.

Because someday he believes he will wear two other hats -- that of husband and father.

Skei was there to hear the screams of Jimmie Wallet as he dug feverishly to free his wife and three daughters from the muck. All perished in the slide.

In that understated way firefighters have he told me: "I never want to be in that position."

-- Colleen Cason's e-mail address is ccason@VenturaCountyStar.com. Her telephone number is 655-5830.