Tag archives: Debris flow

On Tuesday, February 13, Laguna families came together at SOhO Restaurant & Music Club in the name of love and music to benefit Direct Relief and all those affected by the Thomas Fire and Montecito mudslides. In addition to helping others and enjoying an evening of music by Laguna’s talented students, guests heard from Laguna […]

When I returned to Glen Oaks after the evacuation, I was still stunned by the physical and emotional devastation as neighbors mourn the loss of friends, relatives, their homes, and nature itself. Even as we begin to pick up the pieces, the weather forecast promised rain which turned out to be sprinkles not a storm. […]

On the 26th of January, while driving south from Santa Ynez back to Redondo Beach, I went through Montecito and thought about my friend Missy. I knew she had been evacuated during the Thomas Fire, and again shortly thereafter, a second time, as a result of the mudslide. We had spoken only briefly in the […]

“Eye in the Sky” was a big hit for The Alan Parsons Project, reaching No. 3 on Billboard’s chart back in 1982. Thirty-five years later, drones – something the British rocker and producer famed for his early work with The Beatles and Pink Floyd hinted at but probably didn’t fully anticipate – proved especially helpful […]

Montecito’s cleanup effort is well underway with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers having cleared most of the creeks and debris basins. But a largely unanswerable question surrounds the massive mountain of mud still piled on private property: what to do with the stuff. This is not just an individual homeowner problem; it is a […]

John Gorka is no stranger to the Santa Barbara music scene. The New Jersey-born, literate-but-fun singer-songwriter who started playing out in the late 1970s before moving to Minnesota in the 1990s has played at SOhO, done the Sings Like Hell thing, and made repeat visits to the Tales from the Tavern series in Santa Ynez, […]

In the aftermath of the Thomas Fire and 1/9 debris flow, the Santa Barbara County Flood Control District installed six additional real-time rain gauges to provide enhanced rainfall monitoring for the impacted areas. In cooperation with the National Parks Service, three new high-tech gauges were installed at weather monitoring stations on the Channel Islands, located […]

Heal the Ocean (HTO) has received numerous (some irate) phone calls regarding the mud being deposited on Goleta and Carpinteria beaches. Television media has also called for a response from us. We told them, and everyone else, we were investigating and would let everyone know when we knew the answer. We at HTO don’t believe […]

Beanie Baby billionaire Ty Warner is giving paws for thought! The hotelier, whose tony hostelries, including the San Ysidro Ranch and the Biltmore, were heavily impacted by the flash floods and mudslides last month, has produced Cito, a mixed-breed rescue dog, which will be given to each child in Montecito schools and all fire firefighters […]

At this month’s Montecito Association meeting on February 13, the board began by holding the 70th annual assembly to install new board members a month later than originally planned. Members of the board, as well as a standing-room-only audience, held a moment of silence for the members of our community who perished in the January […]

GUEST EDITORIAL by Harry McMullan (Mr. McMullan wrote the following to the Santa Barbara Fire chief, Santa Barbara County sheriff, and all five County supervisors.) My wife and I are residents of Montecito, and we appreciate beyond words the inspiring work of all the firefighters and other first responders who so selflessly and brilliantly saved […]

Two videos on the 93108fund.org website were brought to my attention. Both ladies profiled currently work for Pierre Lafond, and they say in the video that they have missed up to 90 hours [of] work due to the fire/flood and are now receiving checks from the 93108fund.org to make up for lost hours. I’m wondering […]

Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management held both a press conference and a community meeting on February 8, to unveil a new interactive map and revised evacuation plans for future storms, nearly one month after 21 people were killed – two others remain missing – in the mud flow event of January 9. “This […]

Last week, City officials announced their plans to roll out several new traffic measures to help mitigate the increased volume of traffic along Coast Village Road following the mudslides. With the closure of Highway 192 through several portions of Montecito, and the extended closure of Olive Mill Road through the long-term exclusion zone, Coast Village […]

One of the unexpected gifts of the twin tragedies of the Thomas Fire – the largest recorded wildfire in California’s history – and the subsequent Montecito mudslide, has been the outpouring of sympathy, compassion, and support from our neighbors in the City of Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Summerland, Goleta, the rest of Santa Barbara County, and […]

Since the Thomas Fire began December 4 of last year – then burned more than a quarter-million acres of Southern California, including southern segments of the Santa Barbara County shoreline and Montecito – the sound of cash registers and consumers plodding Coast Village Road had been (at one point at least around Christmas, and to […]

In last week’s issue of The Montecito Journal, I explained that if the facts show a fire, covered by a typical homeowners’ insurance policy, was the “efficient proximate cause” of a later mudslide, then mudslide damage could be covered under a homeowners’ insurance policy. On January 29, California insurance commissioner Dave Jones adopted the same […]

The second Monday of December, at the height of the smoke and ash filling the air from the Thomas Fire, I donned my N95 mask and headed down to Yoga Soup for “The Big Sing”, the final session of the initial inCourage Community Chorus classes led by Britta Gudmunson and Ben Gould. It was quite […]