Five killed as mud engulfs California burn areas
AAt least five people were killed and homes were swept from their foundations Tuesday as heavy rain sent mud and boulders sliding down hills stripped of vegetation by Southern California’s recent wildfires.
Rescue crews used helicopters to lift people to safety because of blocked roads, and firefighters slogged through waist-high mud to pull a muck-covered 14-yearold girl out of the ruins of a home in Montecito, northwest of Los Angeles, where she had been trapped for hours. She was taken away on a stretcher.
Five bodies were found in and around Montecito, Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni said.
Several houses were destroyed, and residents were unaccounted for in neighbourhoods hard to reach because of downed trees and power lines, he said. The mud was reported to be up to 1.5 metres deep in places.
“We’re performing multiple rescues. There will be more,” Zaniboni said, adding that some of those brought to safety were buried in mud. There was a backlog of scores of callers requesting help.
Sally Brooks said a “boulder slide” occurred outside her home in nearby Carpinteria in the dead of night.
“We were laying in bed listening to the rain, and out of nowhere our bed just started shaking, and we could hear just this, like, thunder,” she told KTLA-TV.
Photos posted on social media showed upside-down cars along debris-clogged roads and mud waist-deep in living rooms.
Forecasters said the maximum rainfall occurred in a 15-minute span starting at 3:30 a.m. near the Montecito, Summerland and Carpinteria areas of Santa Barbara County. Montecito got more than a half-inch in five minutes, while Carpinteria received 0.86 inches in 15 minutes.
Crews worked to clear debris from roads across the Los Angeles metropolitan area, including a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was brought to a standstill along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Nearly 30 miles of the highway were shut down at point.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered for about 700 homes in sections of Los Angeles County that burned last month in the biggest wildfire on record in California.
The storm walloped much of the state with damaging winds and thunderstorms. Downtown San Francisco got a record eight centimetres of rain on Monday, smashing the old mark of six centimetres set in 1872.
A winter weather advisory was in place for mountain areas, where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions, including gusty winds, low visibility and snow-covered roads. A yearslong drought eased in the state last spring, but Northern California had a dry start to winter and hardly any measurable rain fell in the south over the past six months. The extremely dry conditions and high winds last year led to some of the most destructive blazes on both ends of the state.