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Mudslides Strike Southern California, Leaving at Least 8 Dead Mudslides Strike Southern California, Leaving at Least 13 Dead
(about 3 hours later)
SAN FRANCISCO — Drenching rain sent mud roaring down the hillsides of Santa Barbara County on Tuesday, killing at least eight people, carrying houses off their foundations, snapping telephone poles and wrapping vehicles around trees, the authorities said. CARPINTERIA, Calif. — First came the fires. Now come the floods.
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. 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.
Firefighters rescued one boy under a freeway overpass on Tuesday morning, after mud carried him for hundreds of yards. Still, those children could count themselves among the lucky.
“That kid that was carried probably a third of a mile downstream,” said Mike Eliason, a public information officer for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. “His father is still missing.” 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.
Kelly Hoover, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s office, said details were not available as to the specific circumstances of the eight deaths but that they were all storm-related. 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.
“There’s still lots of areas that we haven’t been able to get to due to debris blocking roadways,” Mr. Eliason, the fire department spokesman, said. 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.
He worked with a team of firefighters that rescued eight people including a 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. “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.
Creeks that usually have only a trickle of water burst their banks and “went where they wanted to go,” Mr. Eliason said. 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.
“I 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.” 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.
The rain began early Tuesday and in some cases fell at a rate of an inch per hour. 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.
The mudslides and flooding closed major roads, brought down power lines and caused numerous traffic accidents across Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, northwest of Los Angeles, officials said. 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.
“We haven’t had this much rain in a while,” said Stuart Seto, a weather specialist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, southeast of where the mudslides occurred. The mountains that rise from the Pacific Coast have seen as much as five inches of rain over the past two days, drenching the fire-ravaged hills. “Before the rains started they were already seeing boulder slides, trees sliding. It was already loose,” Mr. Seto said. 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.
Mudslides closed a stretch of Highway 101, the key artery along the coast south from Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles County was also drenched, with muddy water rushing down hillsides. 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.
At least 20,000 people were without power on Tuesday morning, according to Southern California Edison. “The neighborhood got pummeled,” Mr. Tighe said. “We were lucky in the scope of things.”
Flash floods also threatened parts of Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles Counties. But flooding in and around the area scarred by last month’s Thomas wildfire, the largest on record in California, posed the “greatest threat,” according to the Weather Service. 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.
“Residents living in or immediately downstream should take immediate precautions to protect life and property,” it said in a pre-dawn statement. “Quickly move away from the burn area only if it is safe to do so, otherwise shelter in place and move to a second story or the highest location in your home to stay out of the path of fast-moving water and debris flows.” “We went door to door,” said Gina DePinto, the communications manager for Santa Barbara County. “But many refused to leave.”
Jonathan W. Godt, who coordinates the landslide hazards program at the United States Geological Survey, said the area of the Thomas fire was likely to have debris flows for two reasons: the terrain and the nature of the fire, which burned more than 280,000 acres beginning in early December. 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.
“That’s some really rugged topography,” Dr. Godt said, with steep slopes and large elevation differences. 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.
The fire, in a mostly chaparral landscape, also burned exceptionally hot, Dr. Godt said. A hot fire changes the physical properties of the soil, making it less absorbent. “It becomes much more erodible,” he said. “There’s no place I’d rather be in the world,” he said.
As rainwater runs off and flows downhill, it picks up soil and 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. 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.“You bring that down at 20 miles per hour and it can do a lot of damage,” Dr. Godt said.
But the rainfall can also make whole slopes give way, he said.
The heaviest rains were north of Ojai, in Ventura County, where a total of seven inches is expected through Wednesday, according to Mr. Seto. The worst of the rain had passed by about 7 a.m., though showers and thunderstorms were still possible throughout the day.
At one point early on Tuesday, a rain gauge in the Montecito area recorded a quarter-inch of rain falling in as little as five minutes, according to the National Weather Service.