This morning at least eight people are dead and 25 others are injured in California from
weather-related incidents.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office said this morning that the southern part of
the state has been drenched with severe rain just weeks after several fires tore through
the area. Because hundreds of thousands of acres were charred in the fires earlier this
winter, the downpour of water has nowhere to go.
In the affluent community of Montecito, some homes have been actually been ripped from
their foundations as a result of the torrential conditions after the area saw heavy rainfall
in a very short amount of time. About a third of the rain that has fallen in the last 24
hours in Montecito fell in just 5 minutes according to the National Weather Service.
emergency personnel in the area reported rescuing several people, including a mother and her
daughter who were caked in mud but luckily lived to tell about it.
The Chicago Tribune Reports:
At least 8 dead as heavy rains trigger flooding, mudflows and freeway closures in California
At least eight people were killed Tuesday when a rainstorm sent mud and debris coursing
through Montecito neighborhoods and left rescue crews to scramble through clogged roadways
and downed trees to search for victims.
The deluge that washed over Santa Barbara County early Tuesday was the worst-case scenario
for a community that was ravaged by the Thomas fire only a few weeks earlier. In just a matter
of minutes, pounding rain overwhelmed the south-facing slopes above Montecito and flooded
a creek that leads to the ocean, sending mud and massive boulders rolling into residential
neighborhoods, according to Santa Barbara County Fire Department spokesman Mike Eliason.
"It's going to be worse than anyone imagined for our area," he said. "Following our
fire, this is the worst-case scenario."
Eight people were killed and at least 25 were injured after a heavy band of rain struck
around 2:30 a.m., causing "waist-high" mudflows, according to Kelly Hoover, a spokeswoman
for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office. She could not offer any specifics about the
deceased, except that all eight had died in Montecito.
The mudslide struck a section of the city that is south of the Thomas fire's burn
area and was not subject to a mandatory evacuation, Eliason said. Rescue personnel have yet to
even make it north of Highway 192, which is closer to soil scorched by last month's
wildfire. Burned areas are less capable of absorbing water, making them even more susceptible
to flooding and mudslides.
Officials had no estimate on how many people could be trapped or how many homes were damaged.
The search for survivors was still underway Tuesday afternoon, with many places inaccessible.
"We'll definitely have more," Eliason said, referring to deaths.
Instead, emergency crews spent the first hours of light making rescues in voluntary evacuation
zones near Montecito Creek north of U.S. 101.
In the 300 block of Hot Springs Road, crews rescued six people and a dog after four homes
were destroyed. The mud lifted one home off its foundation and carried it into trees,
where it then collapsed, Eliason said. Firefighters used the jaws of life to cut their way into
the home where a firefighter heard muffled cries for help from a 14-year-old girl, Eliason
said.
A rescue dog pinpointed the girl's location and two hours later, the mud-covered girl
was pulled free. A second 14-year-old girl was also rescued from the same neighborhood
and carried from ankle-high mud in a basket by half a dozen firefighters.
The U.S. Coast Guard also sent rescue helicopters into the area Tuesday morning, hoisting several
people from collapsed homes or rooftops that stood above swirling mud and water. Rescue
personnel were also able to save a young boy who was swept more than half a mile south
from his house after the building was lifted from its foundation in Montecito, authorities
said.
The boy was found alive under a U.S. 101 overpass, authorities said. But his father remains unaccounted
for.
The highest preliminary rainfall total appeared to register at roughly five inches in a gauge
north of Ojai in Ventura County, in the burn area of the Thomas fire, which forced evacuations
and destroyed homes last month, according to the National Weather Service in Los Angeles.
With heavy showers still forecast, flash flood warnings remained in effect for Santa Barbara
County and southern Ventura County through Tuesday afternoon, according to the NWS.
The 101 Freeway was shut down in both directions for more than 30 miles in the Thomas fire
burn area because of flooding and debris flow, spanning an area from Santa Barbara to Ventura,
according to the California Highway Patrol. Sections of Routes 33 and 150 were also closed
in Ventura County, according to the Sheriff's Department. There was no estimate for when
the roadway might reopen, a Caltrans spokesman said Tuesday afternoon.
In Los Angeles, one person was killed when a big rig overturned in the northbound lanes
of the 5 Freeway near Los Feliz, said Saul Gomez, public information officer for the
California Highway Patrol's Southern Division. All northbound lanes were closed as of 4 a.m.,
though Gomez said police were hoping to reopen the roadway by 8 a.m.
The victim, who was not identified, was approximately 60 years old, Gomez said. No one else was
injured. While the accident happened as rain fell across Los Angeles County, Gomez said
he could not confirm the crash was storm-related.
Santa Barbara County officials evacuated nearly 7,000 residents from foothill communities
shortly before the heaviest surge hit the area, according to Hoover. But not everyone
heeded that call.
About 3 a.m., she said, the storm became ferocious.
"We just had a deluge, a power surge of rain. And we had a report of a structure fire
burning in the Montecito area, the San Ysidro area. And it just kept going downhill from
there," she said. "We have people stuck in their homes, stuck in their cars. There's
downed power lines, flooded roadways, debris."
Hoover said the shutdown of the 101 Freeway was heavily hindering rescue efforts.
Thousands evacuated as first major rainstorm in a year hits Southern California
"There's no way to get from Ventura here, no way for us to get south," Hoover said.
"We're encouraging people to stay off the roads if they're in an evacuation area."
By 8:30 a.m., the county's dispatch center had at least 50 calls pending, she said.
Santa Barbara County officials put a boil water notice in effect for the entire Montecito
Water District on Tuesday afternoon.
In Los Angeles County, there was "mudslide activity" on Country Club Drive in Burbank,
where police ordered evacuations of all homes east of Montana on Tuesday morning. The police
department released footage of water surging across a roadway and urged people not to attempt
to drive over it. Some vehicles were picked up and moved by the surge, and a few homes
suffered minor damage, but no one had been injured as of 1 p.m., according to Sgt. Derek
Green, a Burbank police spokesman.
Surges also washed out Topanga Canyon Boulevard north of Pacific Coast Highway, and sections
of the 110 Freeway were closed because of flooding. The Los Angeles Fire Department
had to launch a swift-water rescue to aid a man and a dog trapped in rising water near
the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, and an LAPD cruiser became mired in a debris flow
on La Tuna Canyon Road, according to authorities. The officer was uninjured and walked out of
the vehicle. The cruiser was in the process of being dug out of the mud with a backhoe
early Tuesday.
International travelers arriving at Los Angeles International Airport also had to be diverted
from Terminal 2 on Tuesday morning, after the customs area became flooded, the airport
said on Twitter.
The CHP also said heavy rains likely contributed to a crash that left one person dead on Highway
126 in Ventura County, about two miles from the Los Angeles County line, on Monday afternoon.
One woman died and two others were injured in the five-car crash, the agency said.
The NWS was reporting rainfall totals of up to five inches in Ventura County and 3.3 inches
in Santa Barbara County as of 11 a.m. Nearly 1½ inches of rain had fallen in Bel-Air,
which could be susceptible to mudslides and debris flow because of damage caused by the
Skirball fire last month.
The storm spared some areas that were affected by last month's blazes. Early Tuesday afternoon,
evacuation orders for neighborhoods in the burn areas of the Creek and Fish fires were
lifted, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
In Montecito, some residents said they had shrugged off dire warnings about the rainstorm
before waking up to the morning mess.
"I woke up ready this morning to laugh and scoff at all the gloom-and-doom predictions,"
said Dominic Shiach, 50. "It's actually way worse than I thought it was going to be."
Shiach wore a Navy raincoat as he walked Archie, his 3-year-old West Highland terrier, down
Sycamore Canyon Road on Tuesday morning.
Amber Anderson with the Santa Barbara Incident Management Team said there were about 75 people
who called for help for evacuations.
Marc Phillips realized he should have listened to emergency officials as he trudged down
East Valley Road in mud-soaked jeans.
"They were right" he said, pointing to a place where residences had been knocked
from their foundations. "It looks like there was never a house there, but it was."
This area normally doesn't get this much rain. And because the fires they had late
last year they have a massive amount of debris and dead trees so this was bound to happen
if a fast downpour came in.
All the debris was bound to wash downstream and take homes with them. Plus couple that
with the fact that the terrain in Montecito isn't very stable considering there isn't
much bedrock there. You have a disaster like this waiting to happen. But since the views
and place are beautiful rich people insist on building their homes there, only to have
something like this happen and having the already overburdened taxpayers flip the bill
for their rebuild.
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