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Mudslides Strike Southern California, Leaving at Least 13 Dead - The ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/us/california-mudslides.html
25 mins ago - CARPINTERIA, Calif. — First came the fires. Now come the floods.
Heavy rains lashed the hillsides of Santa Barbara County on Tuesday,
sending one boy hurtling hundreds of yards in a torrent of mud before he
was rescued from under a freeway overpass. His father, though, was
still missing. A 14-year-old ...At least 13 killed in Southern California mudslides - The Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk › News
Mudslides Strike Southern California, Leaving at Least 13 Dead - The ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/us/california-mudslides.html
25 mins ago - CARPINTERIA, Calif. — First came the fires. Now come the floods.
Heavy rains lashed the hillsides of Santa Barbara County on Tuesday,
sending one boy hurtling hundreds of yards in a torrent of mud before he
was rescued from under a freeway overpass. His father, though, was
still missing. A 14-year-old ...At least 13 killed in Southern California mudslides - The Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk › News
Extreme Rain Causes Deadly Mudslides in California
The mudslides have killed at least 13 people in a region devastated by fires last month.
By ROBIN LINDSAY on Publish Date January 9, 2018.
Photo by Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department, via Associated Press.
Watch in Times Video »
CARPINTERIA, Calif. — First came the fires. Now come the floods.
Heavy
rains lashed the hillsides of Santa Barbara County on Tuesday, sending
one boy hurtling hundreds of yards in a torrent of mud before he was
rescued from under a freeway overpass. His father, though, was still
missing. A 14-year-old girl was buried under a mountain of mud and
debris from a collapsed home before being pulled to safety by rescuers
as helicopters circulated overhead, searching for more victims.
Still, those children could count themselves among the lucky.
At
least 13 people — and possibly more, the authorities warned — were
killed on Tuesday as a vast area northwest of Los Angeles, recently
scorched in the state’s largest wildfire on record, became the scene of
another disaster, as a driving rainstorm, the heaviest in nearly a year,
triggered floods and mudslides.
The
wreckage of the downpour, coming so soon after the wildfires, was not a
coincidence but a direct result of the charred lands, left vulnerable
to quickly forming mudslides.
For
residents and emergency workers, still weighing the devastation of the
fires, it was a day of grim rituals resumed: road closings, evacuations,
downed power lines, heroic rescues and a search for the dead.
“There’s
still lots of areas that we haven’t been able to get to due to debris
blocking roadways,” said Mike Eliason, a public information officer for
the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
By
fire or rain, natural disasters have brought death and destruction to
California’s coasts, and further inland, in recent months, adding to the
growing catalog of natural catastrophes in the United States that was
punctuated by three devastating hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria. Last
year, extreme weather that scientists say is partly attributed to
climate change caused more than $306 billion in damage,
a record that surpassed even the $215 billion cost of natural disasters
in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans, according to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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And
that figure was compiled before the heavy rains struck California this
week. Fires have been a scourge of California — dozens of people were
killed in wildfires in Northern California in the fall — but rains bring
their own perils, especially in places where the earth has been
scorched by fire, leaving it susceptible to floods and dangerous
mudslides.
Hundreds
of emergency workers, many of whom had weeks earlier battled the
massive fire that denuded hillsides and made the dirt so unstable,
searched on Tuesday for survivors with the help of Coast Guard
helicopters and heavy equipment to clear blocked roads. And flooding and
mudslides closed a stretch of Highway 101, a crucial artery along the
coast south from Santa Barbara, as well as portions of the 110 freeway.
As
the mud rushed into lower-lying neighborhoods in Montecito, a wealthy
hillside community where many celebrities have homes, the power went out
and gas lines were severed, said Thomas Tighe, a resident.
Sometime
after 2 a.m. Mr. Tighe heard a loud rumbling, which he took to be
boulders crashing down the hills. In the dark of the night, he could
make out his cars floating away. Wearing a wet suit and booties, he used
an ax to break down the fences around his house, which had been holding
back the mud.
By
dawn the devastation — and human toll — became clearer. Just 50 feet
from Mr. Tighe’s home, firefighters found a body, wedged up against a
neighbor’s car. Down the street, a couple and their three children,
including an infant, sought safety on their roof.
“The neighborhood got pummeled,” Mr. Tighe said. “We were lucky in the scope of things.”
Anticipating
the floods, Santa Barbara County officials issued a mandatory
evacuation order on Sunday evening for roughly 7,000 residents, but most
chose to stay in their homes.
“We went door to door,” said Gina DePinto, the communications manager for Santa Barbara County. “But many refused to leave.”
Across
Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, even in areas spared the worst of
the floods, people were once again weighing the attractions of
California life against its dangers.
For
the second time in a month, Mark Carrillo, who lives in the coastal
community of Carpinteria, ignored orders to evacuate his home at the top
of a hill. During the fires last month, he decided to stay put to make
sure no embers landed on his roof.
“There’s no place I’d rather be in the world,” he said.
Mr.
Eliason, the fire department spokesman, said he worked with a team of
firefighters that rescued eight people, including the 14-year-old girl
who was in a house that was forced off its foundation and crashed into a
stand of trees. It took two hours for firefighters to cut her out of
the debris.
Creeks
that during much of the year would only have a trickle of water burst
their banks and “went where they wanted to go,” Mr. Eliason said.
“It
was waist deep in the worst kind of mud you can think of,” he said.
“You sink when you walk into it. You can’t pull your legs out.”
The
rains began several hours after midnight Tuesday and in some cases fell
an inch per hour; by late afternoon the highest recordings of total
rainfall were in a section of Ventura County, where more than five
inches had fallen in Ortega Hill. Over the weekend, as forecasts began
calling for rain, the authorities began warning of possibly dangerous
floods and mudslides in the area that had been consumed by wildfires in
what was known as the Thomas Fire, which burned over 280,000 acres last
month spanning Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, and became
California’s largest wildfire on record.
As
rescuers searched for survivors on Tuesday afternoon, the weather
forecast, at least, offered a respite. According to the National Weather
Service, the rains would taper off by nighttime, and the rest of the
week was forecast to be dry and clear.
Jonathan
W. Godt, who coordinates the landslide hazards program at the United
States Geological Survey, said the area of the Thomas Fire was prone to
debris flows for two reasons: the terrain and the nature of the fire.
“That’s some really rugged topography,” Dr. Godt said, with steep slopes and elevation differences.
The
fire, in a mostly chaparral landscape, also burned exceptionally hot,
Dr. Godt said. A fire changes the physical properties of the soil,
making it less absorbent. “It becomes much more erodible,” he said.
As
rainwater runs off and flows downhill, it picks up soil, trees,
boulders and other debris and eventually collects in a stream channel.
The mix of water and debris, often with a consistency close to wet
concrete, can then continue traveling at high speed down the streambed.
“You bring that down at 20 miles per hour and it can do a lot of damage,” Dr. Godt said.
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