At least 13 die in California mudslides

Mudslides, floods and cascading debris swept away buildings, inundated roads and killed 13 people in southern California as thousands of residents of an area recently devastated by bushfires were forced to flee their homes from the potent forces unleashed by yet another disaster.

Some 25 people were injured, with many more in danger across the region as hills left barren after weeks of fires were transformed by rainstorms into fast moving rivers of mud and debris.

“It’s bad,” said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for Santa Barbara’s incident management team.

All 13 bodies were recovered near Montecito, a coastal community north of Los Angeles, where mudflows carried houses off their foundations and rose to people’s waists, according to the Los Angeles Times.

CNN reported that a “river of mud” descended on the town with no warning, surrounding houses and carrying a washing machine down one block.

Anderson said Montecito and Carpinteria were the county’s worsthit communities. Evacuations had been ordered in both towns, she said — but only a small fraction of residents actually left, and more storm surges were expected to hit after the initial devastation. And that was only one county. Officials warned that the storm could send slides down any burnedout hillside, of which southern California is now full. “If you can look uphill from where you are and see a burned-out area, you are at risk,” reads a standing warning from the National Weather Service.

In La Tuna Canyon, the site of one of the many fires that ravaged southern California in December, small rivers of water coursed through the streets, with several closed off and as crews operating bulldozers worked frantically to clear the mud and debris. The coastal 101 freeway that connects Santa Barbara to Ventura, where December fires devastated huge swaths of land, was completely shut down for more than 50km, the Los Angeles Times reported. It appeared to be entirely submerged in some areas.

Boulders lay in the middle of roadways like street rubbish in parts of the region. A teenager in Montecito was found, alive, so caked in mud she looked nearly indistinguishable from the ruins she spent hours trapped inside.

Nearly 7000 residents were evacuated from foothill communities in Santa Barbara County.

In the northern part of the state, Sonoma and Mendocino counties, where separate fires had destroyed entire neighbourhoods and killed dozens of people last year, were put on watch for flash floods and slides. But the worst of the weather has so far slammed southern California.