Hundreds of searchers yesterday continued the grueling work of hunting for survivors and digging up bodies in the sea of mud and wreckage left by flash flooding in the wealthy coastal enclave of Montecito, California.
Muck-spattered searchers from around the state slogged through knee-deep ooze, poking long poles into the mud to probe for victims.
Search dogs clambered on shattered heaps of wood that used to be homes.
The death toll from Tuesday’s predawn flash flood rose to 17 on Wednesday as more bodies were found. Another 17 were still reported missing.
“It’s just waiting and not knowing, and the more I haven’t heard from them — we have to find them,” said Kelly Weimer, whose elderly parents’ home was wrecked.
The couple, Jim and Alice Mitchell, did not heed a voluntary evacuation warning and stayed home on Monday to celebrate Jim Mitchell’s 89th birthday.
Weimer hoped to find them in a shelter or hospital.
Other people were rescued after being trapped for more than a day in their homes.
Devon Crail, 39, of Santa Barbara came back to his parents’ home on Wednesday to gather belongings and medication they were not able to take with them when they managed to leave that morning.
“I talked to them at about four in the morning,” Crail said. “They had tried to open the front door to leave and the mud started pouring in. They were able to force the door closed and stuck it out until sunrise when they got out.”
Search-and-rescue teams from all over California were working their way through the muck and wreckage of Montecito, a wealthy enclave of 9,000 people northwest of Los Angeles that is home to celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey.
However, the flood left it strewn with mud, boulders, wrecked cars, trashed buildings and tree limbs in a scene that Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown has compared to a World War I battlefield.
By Wednesday, about 500 searchers had covered about 75 percent of the inundated area, authorities said.
However, they had a long and arduous slog ahead.
“A lot of the street signs are gone, the roads are impassable. It all has to be done on foot,” said Deputy Dan Page, chief of the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which sent help to the scene.
“We’ve gotten multiple reports of rescuers falling through manholes that were covered with mud, swimming pools that were covered up with mud,” Los Angeles County fire battalion chief Anthony Buzzerio said. “The mud is acting like a candy shell on ice cream. It’s crusty on top, but soft underneath, so we’re having to be very careful.”
A dozen people were hospitalized at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and four were in critical condition, Brett Wilson said.
People in Montecito had counted themselves lucky last month after the biggest wildfire in California history spared the town, but it was the fire that led to the mudslide, by burning away vegetation.
“We totally thought we were out of the woods,” said Jennifer Markham, whose home escaped damage in both disasters. “I was frozen yesterday morning thinking: ‘This is a million times worse than that fire ever was.’”
Only an estimated 10 to 15 percent of residents fled when ordered and much of the damage occurred where evacuations were voluntary.
It could take days or even longer before the work is finished, but rescuers never really abandon the idea that there might still be people out there, Page said.
“That’s always our mentality: ‘Hey, we’re going to find someone alive,’” Page said. “You never really know. You never know exactly what the human body is capable of.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in