ALERT: Southern California mudslides; 13 dead (January 10, 2018)
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Alert – Southern California mudslides; 13 dead
Santa Barbara County, California officials evacuated nearly 7,000 residents from foothill communities shortly before the heaviest mudslide surge hit the area around 3 a.m. So far, 13 deaths have been reported. The 101 Freeway, in parts of Montecito and Santa Barbara, will remain closed for at least 48 hours. At Los Angeles International Airport, flooding diverted travelers from a Terminal 2 customs area.
According to the CNN/Money:
Weeks after devastating fires tore through Southern California, heavy rains sent mudslides rolling down hillsides in Santa Barbara County on Tuesday, leaving 13 people dead.
The storm uprooted trees and homes, and left mangled cars and abandoned surfboards on the streets.
Roads turned into debris-filled rivers and swallowed up communities downstream from where the Thomas Fire burned thousands of acres last month.
“It was literally a carpet of mud and debris everywhere, with huge boulders, rocks, down trees, power lines, wrecked cars — lots of obstacles and challenges for rescue personnel to get to homes,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.
According to the LA Times:
The California Highway Patrol reported 275 traffic collisions on Los Angeles-area freeways between 5 and 9 a.m. One person was killed when a big rig overturned in the rain in the northbound lanes of the 5 Freeway near Los Feliz, but officials could not confirm the wreck was storm-related.
There were mudslides on Country Club Drive in Burbank, where police ordered evacuations.
The Burbank Police Department released footage of water surging across a roadway and urged people not to attempt to drive over it. The surge picked up and moved some vehicles, and a few homes suffered minor damage, but no one had been injured as of 1 p.m., according to police Sgt. Derek Green.
Surges also washed out Topanga Canyon Boulevard north of Pacific Coast Highway, and flooding closed sections of the 110 Freeway. Rescue workers saved a man and a dog trapped in rising water near the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, and a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser had to be dug out of debris on La Tuna Canyon Road with a backhoe. At Los Angeles International Airport, flooding diverted travelers from a Terminal 2 customs area.
Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, said mudslides are par for the course in this region.
“There are four seasons in California — drought, followed by fire, followed by floods, followed by mudslides,” he said. “That’s the normal sequence that we live with, unfortunately.”
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