Montecito’s emotional scar: ‘It’s changed all of us forever’
MONTECITO, Calif. – The deadly mudslides that swept through this bucolic seaside town a week ago have irrevocably changed the face of the community known for its charming shops, famous residents and sky-high property values.
The physical damage alone will take months to repair. But the damage to residents’ emotional health may linger even longer.
Montecito’s attraction, many residents say, is that almost nothing bad ever happens here: low crime, no snow, hurricanes or tornadoes, and relatively little danger from earthquakes. Even flooding was considered unlikely because the town sits on a hillside that runs right down to the ocean.
“You have beaches and mountains. It was like paradise. And nothing of this magnitude has ever hit this town. People are devastated,” said Bob Santoro as he took a break from shoveling mud from a friend’s driveway.
“People are in shock. Nothing like this has ever happened. It’s more shock than frustration — shock and loss.”
Heavy rains early last Tuesday night unleashed a series of mudslides that ran down mountainsides burned by last month’s Thomas Fire.
The Thomas Fire alone was devastating: two dead, at least 1,000 structures destroyed. Many residents were forced to leave their homes for two weeks as the largest wildfire in recorded state history burned the mountains above. The mudslides heaped misery upon sorrow, killing at least 20 more people and destroying at least 73 more homes.
To be sure, the physical damage to Montecito isn’t absolute. Most streets and homes survived unscathed. Other streets became rivers as mud tore houses in half, blasted cars from garages, ripped down trees and tumbled boulders like Legos.
Firefighters still are conducting the grim task of searching rubble piles of multimillion-dollar homes for victims, assisted by prisoners and cadaver-sniffing dogs that are quickly becoming exhausted in the dangerous conditions. Many evacuated residents don’t yet fully grasp how badly their town has been damaged.
The mudslide has so utterly reorganized the terrain that veteran rescue workers say the hurricanes this summer in Texas and Florida pale in comparison to the concentrated devastation they are entrenched in.
Still, workers already are scraping the mud from the sidewalks outside the custom jewelry and stationary stores lining Coast Village Road and spraying clean the flower gardens.
Businesses are jostling to reopen, and donations are pouring into community groups.
And there was good news about the community’s lifeline: U.S. Highway 101 was now expected to reopen Monday.
At a vigil on Sunday night, community leaders urged residents to “be better” to one another in the coming days, to take this opportunity to be kinder and more helpful to a neighbor who might be struggling inside. Das Williams, an elected county supervisor who represents Montecito, struggled to read aloud the names of the dead, particularly those of the children.
“I’m not used to little kids dying,” he said. Williams urged tourists to visit neighboring Santa Barbara, which he hoped would restore a sense of normalcy. He also acknowledged that some businesses in Montecito have warned they’ll shut down forever if their town doesn’t get functioning soon.
“The timetable for getting back to normal isn’t known to anyone,” he said, a note of frustration creeping into his voice.
Back in the debris fields, that’s a fact local firefighters understand.
The approximately 50 men and women of the Montecito Fire Department are working shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers as they pick through debris piles in search of bodies, stopping occasionally to rescue photos or other valuable items recognizable through the muck.
“Even when it’s all cleaned up, it’s going to look different,” Montecito firefighter Ryland McCracken said. “I think it’s changed all of us forever. There will always be ‘before this’ and ‘after this.’ ”