Fires lead to deadly Californian mudslides
UNITED STATES: At least 13 people are dead in Southern California, where mudslides, cascading debris and floods have swept away buildings, inundated roads and forced thousands to flee their homes.
Rescuers found eight bodies throughout Santa Barbara County yesterday, with more people in danger across the region as a rainstorm sends mud and debris flowing down hills left barren after weeks of fires.
‘‘It’s bad,’’ said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for Santa Barbara’s incident management team.
She said more storm surges were expected in the afternoon, even as rescuers counted the dead found in the morning.
All eight 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. Anderson said 25 people were injured.
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 worst-hit communities. Evacuations had been ordered in both towns, she said, but only a fraction of residents 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 burned-out hillside, of which Southern California is now full.
‘‘If you can look uphill from where you are and see a burnedout area, you are at risk,’’ reads a standing warning from the National Weather Service.
The coastal freeway that connects Santa Barbara to Ventura, where December fires devastated huge swaths of land, was shut for more than 50 kilometres, the Times reported. It appeared to be entirely submerged in some areas.
Boulders lay in the middle of roadways like street trash 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.
In the northern part of the state, Sonoma and Mendocino counties, were put on watch for flash floods and slides. –