Death toll rises in California floods
Heavy rains cause flooding
MONTECITO, Calif. — At least 13 people were killed and homes were torn from their foundations Tuesday as downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down hills stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire that raged in Southern California last month.
Helicopters were used to pluck more than 50 people from rooftops because trees and power lines blocked roads, and firefighters pulled a 14-yearold girl from a collapsed Montecito home where she had been trapped for hours.
“I thought I was dead for a minute there,” the girl could be heard saying on video posted by KNBC-TV before she was taken away on a stretcher.
Most deaths were believed to have occurred in Montecito, a wealthy enclave of about 9,000 people northwest of Los Angeles that is home to such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe and Ellen DeGeneres, said Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos.
Twenty people were hospitalized and four were described as “severely critical” by Dr. Brett Wilson of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
An unknown number were unaccounted for and authorities were trying to determine if they were missing or just hadn’t contacted family members. The search for survivors continued into the evening, though Wilson noted that their conditions would deteriorate if they got wet.
The mud was unleashed in the dead of night by flash flooding in the steep, firescarred Santa Ynez Mountains. Burned-over zones are especially susceptible to destructive mudslides because scorched earth doesn’t absorb water well and the land is easily eroded when there are no shrubs.
The torrent of mud early Tuesday swept away cars and destroyed several homes, reducing them to piles of lumber. Photos posted on social media showed waist-deep mud in living rooms.
Authorities had been bracing for the possibility of catastrophic flooding because of heavy rain in the forecast for the first time in 10 months.
Evacuations were ordered beneath recently burned areas of Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
The worst of the rainfall occurred in a 15-minute span starting at 3:30 a.m.
Montecito is beneath the scar left by a wildfire that became the largest ever recorded in California.