A total of 25,000 people were evacuated from California on Monday as a result of the latest in a spate of Pacific storms that have been linked to at least 12 fatalities, including the whole town of Montecito and neighboring portions of the Santa Barbara coast.
Authorities in 17 California areas, including the Montecito evacuation zone, are concerned that a recent string of torrential downpours might unleash deadly cascades of mud, stones, and other debris in hillsides stripped bare of vegetation by previous wildfires.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered five years after Montecito, a wealthy coastal community 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles, was devastated by mudslides caused by heavy rains in January 2018, which resulted in extensive damage and the deaths of more than 20 people.
Raquel Zick, a Santa Barbara County sheriff’s spokesperson, told Reuters that sheriff’s deputies were out navigating flooded roads in armored high-clearance BearCat SWAT vehicles to rescue residents stranded by high water.
Oprah Winfrey, the owner of Oprah Winfrey Network, and Prince Harry and his wife Meghan from the United Kingdom are just a few of the roughly 9,000 residents of Montecito, many of whom live in lavish houses in the lovely town.
If they were among those compelled to leave the area was not immediately evident. During the New Year’s vacation, Winfrey was rumored to have traveled to Hawaii.
Ellen DeGeneres, an actress and comedian who is also a well-known resident of Montecito, shared a video selfie on Twitter showing herself in the rain next to a torrent rushing through what she described as a typically dry creek bed close to her home.
The performer, garbed in a hooded jacket, tweeted that she had been advised to “shelter in place” rather than evacuate since her home was on higher ground.
“We need to be nicer to Mother Nature, because Mother Nature is not happy with us,” she said in the video. “Let’s all do our part. Stay safe, everybody. Yikes.”
All 15 districts of Montecito were ordered to immediately evacuate along with portions of the city of Santa Barbara and adjacent areas of Carpinteria and Summerland where “burn scars” posed a threat of mudslides, the Montecito Fire Department said.
Social media video posted online by TMZ.com showed a man paddling his kayak in the middle of a flooded street in Santa Barbara. The Los Angeles Times reported numerous road closures from flooding and debris flows, including sections of U.S. highway route 101 in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
Along the central California coast, some 14,000 people were ordered evacuated early on Monday from four Santa Cruz County communities inundated with flash floods, extreme tides and heavy runoff from local mountains, said Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the state Office of Emergency Services.
Nearly 4,000 more people in the town of Wilton remained under evacuation orders due to flood threats from breached levees along the Cosumnes River south of Sacramento, the state capital. Another 42,000 residents of roughly a dozen counties were under evacuation warnings, Ferguson said.
The torrential rains, along with heavy snow in mountain areas, were the product of yet another “atmospheric river” of dense moisture funneled into California from the tropical Pacific, powered by sprawling low-pressure systems churning offshore.
At least a dozen fatalities have been attributed to several back-to-back storms that have lashed California since Dec. 26, including a toddler killed when a redwood tree was blown over his family’s trailer home last week.
Experts say the growing frequency and intensity of such storms, interspersed with extreme dry spells, are symptoms of climate change, posing greater challenges to managing California’s precious water supplies while minimizing risks of floods, mudslides and wildfires.
The six storms since just after Christmas have been accompanied by pounding surf that has battered seaside communities, as well as fierce, gale-force winds that have uprooted thousands of trees weakened by prolonged drought.
The National Weather Service (NWS) has warned the latest onslaught would impact most of California’s 39 million residents, with up to 5 inches of additional rain expected to fall near the coast and more than a foot of snow on the Sierra Nevada mountains over the next few days.
The high winds have wreaked havoc on the state’s power grid, knocking out electricity to tens of thousands of Californians. As many as 120,000 homes and business were without electricity on Monday morning, according to data from Poweroutage.us.
U.S. President Joe Biden has approved an emergency declaration authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate disaster relief efforts and mobilize emergency resources in California.
(Reporting by Erica Urech in Montecito, Calif.; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, Calif. and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Josie Kao and Christopher Cushing)
