Twenty thousand people in California have been evacuated from areas below the hillsides that had burned from the largest wildfire (Thomas Wildfire) in California history.
At least 13 people are dead with a possibility of more deaths warn officials.
CARPINTERIA, Calif. — First came the fires. Now come the floods.
Heavy rains lashed the hillsides of Santa Barbara County on Tuesday, sending one boy hurtling hundreds of yards in a torrent of mud before he was rescued from under a freeway overpass. His father, though, was still missing. A 14-year-old girl was buried under a mountain of mud and debris from a collapsed home before being pulled to safety by rescuers as helicopters circulated overhead, searching for more victims.
Still, those children could count themselves among the lucky.
At least 13 people — and possibly more, the authorities warned — were killed on Tuesday and more than two dozen were injured as a vast area northwest of Los Angeles, recently scorched in the state’s largest wildfire on record, became the scene of another disaster, as a driving rainstorm, the heaviest in nearly a year, triggered floods and mudslides.
A mudslide can vary from very watery mud to thick mud with tons of debris, including large boulders, trees, cars or houses.
By fire or rain, natural disasters have brought death and destruction to California’s coasts, and further inland, in recent months, adding to the growing catalog of natural catastrophes in the United States that was punctuated by three devastating hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria. Last year, extreme weather that scientists say is partly attributed to climate change caused more than $306 billion in damage, a record that surpassed even the $215 billion cost of natural disasters in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
And that figure was compiled before the heavy rains struck California this week. Fires have been a scourge of California — dozens of people were killed in wildfires in Northern California in the fall — but rains bring their own perils, especially in places where the earth has been scorched by fire, leaving it susceptible to floods and dangerous mudslides.
x xYouTube VideoMudslides around Thomas fire burn area exacerbated by 11 months of dry conditions
But Patzert said the mudslides were exacerbated by the fact that Southern California saw less than one inch of rain in the past 11 months, making conditions extremely dry. And he said that hot, fast-moving fires change the chemistry of surface soil, allowing little water to soak through. That means debris can flow unconstrained.
Patzert said California has some of the best flood controls in the world. Basins around the foothills catch debris flows to mitigate damage, and most runoff flows into the Pacific Ocean. The damage that results from mudslides, he said, is mainly a function of bad zoning.
“When you’re living below a hillside that potentially can burn, you’re a risk-taker,” he said.
Post-wildfire debris flow: 2016 Fish Fire, Las Lomas Canyon
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