Deadly mud carried away families

Emergency crews climbed and clawed through thick flows of mud and dangerous debris in some of southern California’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, as the death toll from the collapse of rain-soaked hillsides rose to 17 people.

This neighbourhood of gated homes and sloping streets just south of Santa Barbara has taken on the character of a Hollywood set, weeks after flames threatened the kind of destruction that mudslides have done in days. Wide swaths of ash and earth have smashed multimilliondollar homes into pieces, filled hotel lobbies with muck, and blocked the main highway from Los Angeles for kilometres.

But the human tragedy, which unfolded on Wednesday and continued yesterday, far exceeded the emotional punch of the severe property damage.

Whole families have been carried away by the mud. Rescued children who survived their parents remain in critical condition in hospital. At least 13 other people are missing.

As helicopters picked families off the roofs of their battered homes, community members branched out on their own in search of survivors and bodies, searching creek beds and canyons and splintered piles of wood and stone that once were homes. Churches became shelters for the thousands of evacuated people, who may have no place to live for months. Thousands of others are without water or power and may remain so for days.

Brenda Bottoms, a Montecito resident, described the muddy handprints she saw on the sides of neighbouring homes, which had been slammed and partly carried off by a mudflow. “This is a neighbourhood. And now everything’s gone.”

The mudslides mark the cruel postscript to the Thomas fire, which burned for much of December. Firefighters worked to save nearly all of Montecito’s houses. The blaze left the mountains bare, especially along the slopes and in the canyons above Montecito.

Santa Barbara County fire officials said that 100 homes have been destroyed.