Tag archives: Debris flow

Last Thursday, February 11, several community leaders and nearby residents came out to a small ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the opening of the new bridge across San Ysidro Creek at East Mountain Drive. Public Works Director Scott McGolpin, First District Supervisor Das Williams, Public Works Deputy Directors Julie Hagen and Chris Sneddon, Bucket Brigade […]

Three years after a January 9, 2018 debris flow half-buried Paul Madsen’s home, the Montecito resident who lives on Posilipo Lane adjacent to the Rosewood Miramar Beach has finally dug himself out of the mud. Excavation work that has been underway for the past few weeks is scheduled to wrap up later this week. According […]

Nearly three years to the day after the 1/9 Debris Flow that damaged or destroyed over 600 homes as well as debilitated Montecito infrastructure, the Santa Barbara County Public Works Department made a significant step in the rebuilding process with the replacement of the East Mountain Drive Bridge over San Ysidro Creek. The bridge, which […]

My mom, Carrie Haffner, has two stickers on her car. One is a harbor pass that expired six years ago, the other is a Bucket Brigade magnet. She likes both and says she keeps them because they “show other people that we’re locals.” This week we’re hearing from an old classmate of mine, Laguna Blanca […]

Saturday night, many of us gathered electronically to commemorate the third anniversary of the Debris Flow that claimed 23 of our community members, destroyed hundreds of homes, and shook us to our core.  It’s a day we’ll never forget.  As with all major disasters, the entire community experienced a collective trauma: shock, loss, grief, and […]

Three years after Montecito’s devastating debris flows, some memories just won’t fade away Although the mud is gone, and most of the rocks have been either carted away or stacked in piles nearby, the intersection of Hot Springs Road and Olive Mill Road still bears witness to the work that remains to be done before […]

Retired high tech executive Jan Wesemann is getting priceless publicity in the Wall Street Journal this week as she puts her 20-acre French country-style Montecito estate on the market for $12 million. Jan moved into the 7,600-square-foot, five-bedroom, seven-and-a-half-bathroom house, built in 2001, 10 years ago and brought up her four daughters on the Park […]

The Montecito Association Land Use Committee met earlier this week, and took a look back at the major land use projects the committee worked on in 2020. “We recognized early on after the debris flow that there would be multiple large scale projects to tackle,” said MA Executive Director Sharon Byrne, adding that the projects […]

As our community approaches the third anniversary of the 1/9 Thomas Fire Debris Flow, we find ourselves in the third consecutive disaster we’ve faced as a community, and this time it’s a global pandemic. This Saturday, we’d love to gather everyone, come together as a community, and remember those we lost in the early morning […]

Also at MPC last week, County planner Joe Dargel gave an update on the rebuilding following the Thomas Fire and 1/9 debris flow, nearly two years after the debris flow damaged or destroyed 631 structures in Montecito, and took the lives of 23 members of our community.  When the County first took stock of the […]

Also happening at MFPD, Montecito Fire Division Chief of Operations, Alan Widling, is set to retire on December 30. The #2 in command at MFPD, Chief Widling has worked the last 31 years of his life in the service of others.  Widling was hired as a full-time firefighter by the Montecito Fire Department in September […]

This Thursday, December 17, the Montecito Fire Department, in partnership with the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management (OEM), the Carpinteria Summerland Fire Protection District, and First District Supervisor Das Williams will host a virtual community meeting to provide winter preparedness information and to publicly release the updated Interactive Storm Impact Consideration Risk Map. […]

In a unanimous vote last week, the Montecito Planning Commission extended the permits for several Swiss-built flexible steel debris nets that were installed above town after the tragic mudslides that occurred in the wake of the Thomas Fire nearly three years ago. Thanks to a multi-million-dollar fundraising effort by The Partnership for Resilient Communities (TPRC), […]

What Makes Montecito Stand Out for You? Montecito Union School was a great fit for our son during his elementary years, and Coast Village Road and the Upper Village have been quaint yet perfectly suited to our lifestyle and needs. But there was some bad to come before it got better. There were fires, then […]

The crew capsule aboard the Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket that NASA successfully blasted into space last weekend achieved an amazing milestone. This incredible event was the remarkable result of the public-private sector partnership between NASA and SpaceX that sent astronauts directly from the U.S. to the International Space Station for the first time in nine […]

It takes not only a surfeit of talent but also a lot of moxie to go from singing in a church choir and performing gospel music as a teen to achieving international pop stardom as a young adult. Katy Perry, born in Santa Barbara in 1984 as Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, surely has plenty of both.  […]

As record-breaking wildfires affect millions of people across the state of California, we recently sat down with Montecito Fire Chief Kevin Taylor, who has been at the helm of the District for one year. From getting to know Chief Taylor and his family better, to learning about Montecito’s future fire and debris flow risk, we […]

When we first met Paul Madsen, he was the subject of much speculation within a lower Montecito message board on Nextdoor.com. Over the summer, several community members had posted on the app that they’d observed (and had been observed by) a gentleman seated in a white SUV parked on Posilipo Lane, just past the Rosewood […]

Andy Caldwell’s mother was an immigrant from Austria and his father was a Bataan Death March survivor. Andy was born on an Air Force base in Jacksonville, Arkansas. After his father got out of the Air Force, they moved to Kingsburg, California, just south of Fresno. His dad passed away when Andy was nine years […]

On January 9, 2018, Ken Grand went through the kind of hell most of us could never even imagine. That was the night that a torrential downpour resulted in the infamous Montecito mudslides and debris flow that killed 23 people. Among the casualties was Grand’s wife, Rebecca Riskin, the popular professional ballerina turned realtor whose […]