From the pictures and videos I've now seen these appear to be the worst mudslides I've ever seen in California

When you look at these pictures and pictures what occurs to me is that we are lucky 100 or 1000 people didn't die  when you see devastation like this. Even if you got outside and ran likely you would have been mowed down by boulders and mud higher than your head in many locations. So, unless you were young and nimble enough to climb up on your roof or climb a tree not knocked down by a boulder you wouldn't have survived anyway and would have been crushed by houses, trees, cars or boulders or just knocked down by the mud. And most trees nearby were Eucalyptos or Oak Trees, neither of which is a good tree climbing tree for various reasons unless you have ropes and and rock climbing devices. So, if you stood on your roof from a ladder and then your home was knocked down out from under you you would have been toast.

So, this is why many people over about 65 didn't make it. Also, this happened on the first night of heavy rain at around 4 AM in the morning PST. So, imagine you didn't hear a weather report and didn't even expect rain because it hadn't really rained much at all the last year or so ever.

So, unless you could climb on your roof at 4 am at the first sign of noise or have climbed a tree that wasn't going to be knocked down by Houses, rocks or cars being crushed you weren't going to survive anyway these mud slides that moved down denuded by fire hills all the way THROUGH Montecito to Highway 101 and miring Semi Trucks in 5 feet of mud and rocks. 100 homes destroyed and the main coastal route north in California Closed from Santa Barbara to Carpenteria and points south. If you look at the map on the right of Montecito, the green areas at the top are mountains with steep hillsides. The green line along the coast is likely Hiway 101. So what we are talking about here is mudslides starting at the top in green and moving through whole parts of Montecito and then closing Highway 101 along the coast. I haven't ever heard of this kind of thing happening like this through a city ever before in my lifetime. So, this is Global Warming folks. Expect more to come as more rain storms barrel through here between now and April or May.

For example, there are completely mangled cars sitting on the beaches of Santa Barbara right now in the ocean water. This is crazy!