CHICO, California - Northern California residents left homeless by the deadliest, most destructive wildfire in state history braced for a new bout of misery on Tuesday from showers expected to plunge encampments of evacuees into rain-soaked fields of mud.
The impending Pacific storm was also certain to hinder search teams sifting through ash and rubble for remains of additional victims in a disaster that already has claimed at least 81 lives and left hundreds more missing.
As much as 6 inches (15 cm) of rain was expected to fall over several days starting early on Wednesday around the town of Paradise, a community of nearly 27,000 people, many of them retirees, that was largely obliterated by the Camp Fire.
Forecasters said there was a slight risk of rains unleashing rivers of mud and debris down flame-scorched slopes stripped of vegetation by the blaze, which has burned across 151,000 acres (61,107 hectares) of the Sierra foothills north of San Francisco.
But because of mass evacuations still in effect since the fire erupted on Nov. 8, few if any people were believed to be in harm's way should any debris flows materialize, according to National Weather Service (NWS) hydrologist Cindy Matthews.
She also said due to the volcanic soil and relatively shallow slopes found in the fire zone, the ground is unlikely to become saturated enough for hillsides to give way to landslides that can occur in newly burned areas after heavy rains.
However, authorities in Southern California warned residents in areas burned by a pair of recent large wildfires in the coastal foothills and mountains northwest of Los Angeles to be wary of mud-flow hazards from the same storm this week. One of those blazes, the Woolsey Fire, killed 3 people.
While the showers will prove a boon to firefighters still laboring to suppress the flames, the storm will heighten the discomfort factor for many displaced residents who are essentially camping rather than staying in emergency shelters.
"There are people still living in tents," Sacramento-based NWS meteorologist Eric Kurth said in a telephone interview. "That's certainly not going to be pleasant with the rain, and we might get some wind gusting up to 40 to 45 miles per hour (64 to 72 km per hour)."
'MUD CITY'
One of those evacuees, Kelly Boyer, lost his home in Paradise and was sharing a tent with a friend at an encampment outside a Walmart store in nearby Chico, where overnight low temperatures have fallen to just above freezing.
Boyer said he was grateful for wooden pallets and plastic tarps donated by local residents to evacuees to help keep their tents off the ground and dry when the rains come, though he said the showers would still make a mess.
"It's going to be mud city," he told Reuters.
The rains, however, will help dispel heavy smoke that has lingered in the air.
"We're really expecting the air quality to improve. That's the bright side for those people up there," he said.
Meanwhile, smoke from the recent California wildfires has drifted across the country to the East Coast, where it was widely noticed in the form of a brownish, orange haze in the sky and was credited with unusually vibrant sunsets on Monday.
"So if you thought it was just a bit hazy this afternoon, we have a California smoke plume moving through," retired NWS meteorologist Gary Szatkowski, who continues to track weather phenomenon from his home in New Jersey, wrote on Twitter.
Most of the transcontinental smoke plume, illustrated on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map he posted on Twitter, was "a couple of miles up" in the atmosphere, high enough to be carried east by the jet stream.
The Camp Fire incinerated some 13,000 homes in and around Paradise, mostly during the first night of the blaze when gale-force winds drove flames through drought-parched scrub and trees into the town with little warning, forcing residents to flee for their lives.
The Butte County Sheriff's Office has tentatively identified 64 of the 79 victims whose remains have so far been recovered.
Meanwhile, the missing-persons list compiled by the sheriff's office was revised downward to 699 names on Tuesday, from a high of more than 1,200 over the weekend.
The number has fluctuated dramatically over the past week as more individuals were reported missing or as some initially listed as unaccounted for either turned up alive or were confirmed dead.
Buffer lines have been carved around 75 percent of the fire's perimeter and full containment is expected by the end of the month, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The number of residents needing temporary shelter was unclear but as many as 52,000 people were under evacuation orders at the height of the firestorm last week.
The cause of the Camp and Woolsey fires are under investigation but electric utilities reported localized equipment problems around the time both blazes broke out.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LOS ANGELES - Authorities in southern California raised the death toll from mudslides that battered the region to 19 on Saturday as rescue workers continued the search for victims.
Five people are still missing after the mudslides, according to an update on the County of Santa Barbara's website, which warned people to "anticipate the numbers of missing persons to fluctuate significantly."
"Crews continue to search buildings and debris flows for trapped victims. The unstable environment remains a critical threat to civilians and responders," it said.
"The large amounts of mud and debris are making access and progress challenging."
Heavy rain on Tuesday, which followed 10 months of drought, sent sticky mud and debris flowing down the hills into Montecito.
In addition to the dead and injured, 65 homes have been destroyed while another 462 sustained damage.
Terrifying wildfires in the area forced evacuations in December, and the mudslides struck just two weeks after people returned.
The fires burned most vegetation, leaving perfect conditions for the latest disaster to unfold.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
SANTA BARBARA - Southern California rescue workers using dogs and scanners searched for eight people feared lost in the wreckage of this week's deadly mudslides, which struck along the state's picturesque coastal communities, according to officials.
Seventeen people were confirmed dead after a wall of mud roared down hillsides two days earlier in the scenic area between the Pacific Ocean and the Los Padres National Forest, according to Santa Barbara County authorities. The mudslides destroyed about 100 homes and injured 28 people.
"We have crews out there," said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. "They've been working 24 hours a day."
About 500 rescuers using search dogs, military helicopters, and thermal imaging equipment were on the scene. On Wednesday, dogs helped crews rescue 10 stranded residents, Anderson said. Rescues were partly reflected in the tally of missing, which was revised to eight from 17 on Thursday morning.
Search and rescue efforts have been slow as crews have to navigate through waist-deep mud, fallen trees, boulders and other debris. Teams have completed initial searches of the entire debris field and are about a quarter of the way through a more intensive secondary search of the zone, Anderson said.
"Another tough day in Santa Barbara County as Search and Rescue, Fire and Law Enforcement personnel from across our county and our neighboring counties searched for survivors and evacuated people," the sheriff's office said on its Twitter feed late Wednesday night.
The mudslides, triggered by heavy rains early on Tuesday, roared into valleys denuded by historic wildfires that struck the area last month.
In addition to destroying 100 homes, the debris flow from the mudslides has damaged hundreds of other structures, officials said.
Among the damaged properties were historic hotels and the homes of celebrities, including media mogul and actress Oprah Winfrey and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, who both live in the upscale hillside community of Montecito.
DeGeneres said on her talk show on Thursday that the picturesque town of 9,000 is a "tight-knit" community.
"It's not just a wealthy community, it's filled with a lot of different types of people from all backgrounds," she said. "And there are families missing, there are people who are missing family members ... it's catastrophic."
Last month's spate of wildfires, including the largest in California history, not only burned away grass and shrubs that held soil in place, but also baked a waxy layer into the earth that prevents water from sinking deeply into the ground.
"First we got burned out at our ranch that caught on fire and now we're flooding, so the last month has been pretty bad," Charles Stoops said as he stood in front of his house, which was surrounded in mud 3 feet (nearly a meter) deep.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LOS ANGELES - California rescuers worked through the night plucking stranded Santa Barbara residents from mudslides that have killed at least 15 people and devastated the coastal community after it was drenched by rain, authorities said on Wednesday.
The death toll could go higher still as rescuers continued searching for victims, mostly in the upscale enclave of Montecito - where mudslides slammed into homes, covered highways and swept away vehicles - officials warned.
"We don't know how many additional people are still trapped," Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said on the "CBS This Morning" program. "We know there are some, and we're still making our way into certain areas of Montecito and the adjacent areas to determine if anyone is still there and still alive."
The mudslides followed an ordeal of fire and water for the area northwest of Los Angeles. A torrential downpour on Tuesday soaked the area, which was left vulnerable after much of its vegetation burned in the state's largest wildfire last month.
Forecasters were calling for clear skies on Wednesday.
Emergency workers began their task on Tuesday using search dogs and helicopters to rescue dozens of people stranded in mud-coated rubble in the normally pristine area, sandwiched between the ocean and the sprawling Los Padres National Forest.
A 14-year-old girl was found alive on Tuesday after firefighters using rescue dogs heard cries for help from what was left of her Montecito home, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"I thought I was dead there for a minute," the teenager Lauren Cantin, covered in mud, told NBC News after workers spent six hours rescuing her.
Rescuers worked through the night, searching for victims amid the dozens of homes that were destroyed, and using helicopters to lift more than 50 stranded residents from the mud.
"We're finding people continuously," said Yaneris Muniz, spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Joint Information Center. "We had a helicopter and several crews out all night, and now that it's day, we’ll be able to intensify those searches."
Officials have ordered residents in a large swath of Montecito to stay in their homes so that rescuers can better go about their work.
About 300 people were stranded in a canyon. Local rescue crews, using borrowed helicopters from the U.S. Coast Guard, worked to airlift them out, officials said.
The county initially ordered 7,000 residents to evacuate and urged another 23,000 to do so voluntarily, but only 10 to 15 percent complied with mandatory orders, said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
The county set up an evacuation shelter at Santa Barbara City College, where some people showed up drenched in mud, and also provided a place for people to take their animals.
The number of fatalities surpassed the death toll from a California mudslide on Jan. 10, 2005, when 10 people were killed as a hillside gave way in the town of La Conchita, less than 20 miles south of the latest disaster.
Last month's wildfires, the largest in California history, left the area vulnerable to mudslides. The fires burned away grass and shrubs that hold the soil in place and also baked a waxy layer into the earth that prevents water from sinking deeply into the ground.
Some local residents had to flee their homes due to the fires last month and again this week because of the rains.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
