Edhat Staff
Aftermath of the 1/9 Debris Flow in Montecito (Photo: SBCFD)
By edhat staff
A new report by the Los Angeles Times states Santa Barbara County officials knew mudslides were a risk in Montecito and records show they did little to prevent them.
Situated above Montecito, Cold Springs Creek can turn into a vessel for mud, huge boulders, and uprooted trees during harsh winter storms. It drains three square miles of sheer mountain front.
The only protection Montecito residents and their properties have is a low dam built in 1964 by the Army Corps of Engineers at the mouth of the creek’s canyon. It forms a basin to catch falling debris. Since it’s construction, the basin has filled with vegetation and sediment along with the 16 other basins built along the hillside to Carpinteria.
Last year the Thomas Fire ravaged the hillside leaving the area vulnerable to rapid erosion. Then on January 9 of this year, an unprecedented storm caused debris flow and mudslides that killed 23 people, destroyed 130 structures, and caused insurmountable damage.
The Los Angeles Times reports they conducted an eight-month investigation and found “government officials did not heed decades-old warnings to build bigger basins that could have made the mudslides far less catastrophic — and that Santa Barbara County failed to thoroughly empty the existing basins before the disaster, drastically reducing their capacity to trap debris.”
They further state that “Santa Barbara County flood control officials and the Army Corps had known for half a century there were too few catchments and that the ones they had were far too small to stop the enormous debris flows that the Santa Ynez Mountains were prone to produce.”
Per a Santa Barbara County survey, the Cold Springs Creek catchment was cleared out in 2005, but the basin only had two-thirds of its capacity. The Times reports that during a major mudflow, that reduction would enable 7,000 cubic yards of storm debris that could have been trapped to flow into Montecito. According to records included in a 231-page county report on state of the flood control system, published mid-2017, the 11 catchments surveyed had only 44% of their designed capacity.
According to documents retrieved by the Times, neither the flood control agency nor the community was worried, and no officials remarked that the catchments were more than half full with sand and rocks.
Read the full report at latimes.com
I expect lots of commenters to pile on the County and Army Corps of Engineers, but I’ll point out that if anyone tried to enlarge or build new debris basins and catchments, they would have been beat up mercilessly for destroying stream habitat, carving new access roads into canyons, increasing truck traffic, visual blight, damaging steelhead habitat, etc etc etc. What we got pre-fire/pre-storm was the result of the balance of all those political, budget, and leadership forces. Perhaps some of this will be addressed now, but it did unfortunately take a disaster to move the needle.
I enjoy finger-pointing, and especially I love Monday morning quarterbacking. It’s my thing. It’s such a wonderful advantage to look back, with intrinsic authority and pomposity (right L.A. Times?).
Point it out Yacht, but it doesn’t take away from the facts. Reading this article made my head spin. This disaster may not have been avoidable but the deaths and a whole lot of the destruction absolutely were. And the county is 100% culpable. Years and years of systematic management failures and gross negligence by the part of people whose job it was to oversee the safety of our community are presented in this article. Personally, I’d like to see some of the decision makers and managers who diverted the funds, made the decisions or buried the findings, to get jail time. However, since no one in our government is actually accountable, they will skate away scot free… Or as the POTUS tweets Scott Free. The fact that the county did not heed either the recommendations of its own experts or the Army Corp is one aspect, the other is the unbelievably stupid call by someone(s) to use Hwy 192 – a road that runs perpendicular to the creeks and gravity flow, as the delineation for evacuations. Whoever made that decision should see jail time or at the very least have lost their job. This kind of stuff is why no one has any faith in the government to watch out for the welfare and safety of the community. Many people failed to do their duty and so far, no one is taking any responsibility or blame.
Ahhhhh.. I just love the smell of fresh blood and watching the attorneys starting to circle! You can just hear the leather soled shoes running to file papers on this one.
I can only help that with their traditional 33%, all of them will make out well from this tragedy!
In the article it says that the County is not letting him talk to the press any more. I’m very surprised that there haven’t been any lawsuits over the evacuation zones or the basin cleanouts yet. Not sure what they are waiting for.
yet another example have over paid & pensioned gov’t workers fail to do their very basic job. Sad it had to result in so much pain for the community.
Remember this article when your leaders cry for raises & increases to pension funding – out of control with no accountability.
Waiting to hear the Environmental Defense Center to weigh in on this report. I also remember a lot of hostile opposition to the creation of fire breaks, clearing underbrush and any other possible habitat disturbances. So it follows they would be also opposed to installation debris basins as well. I don’t know how this conflict of interests will get resolved but it could start first with a few mea culpas from EDC. Crickets?
County supervisor Peter Adam did try to get voters to devote a fixed amount to county infrastructure maintenance every year. Voters turned this proposed mandate down, mainly due to the county employee unions who raised threats about losing budget flexibility. That refusal to be specifically accountable for county maintenance needs also becomes part of the “faulty finding” if fingers are going to be pointed. Adam tried; unions said no.
How exactly are humans supposed stop the earth from moving/sliding etc. ? I believe there is nothing that would have stopped that night from happening, no matter how big a basin they make. It’ll happen again too.
Those basins and creeks hadn’t been really touched in years, maybe decades. They continued to fill over time then the unimaginable happened. The fact that Hayman was told by county attorneys to shut it speaks volumes. This city and county are crumbling before our eyes and this Is just another example of the poor management of the county of sb, although I find the county to be way more competent than the city, there were many mistakes made on this one on many levels.
And homeowners did even less – building their home at the bottom of a steep mountain in a super dry climate known for big wet winter storms.
As for the LATimes claim the warnings were confusing – I was on the other side of the world in remote Borneo and still heard about understood the need to evacuate before the storm – voluntary vs mandatory zones did not matter – there’s a gigantic mountain over you, it just burned, and big rain is coming. Go to Motel6 and have a pizza party.
so, if the weather man cannot predict if we will get rain, how do you expect the city to predict if there will be a debris flow? There is an enormous amount of finger pointing and ” save me” attitude floating around this city. BEFORE we had cell phones and computers that could send out information in an instant. we had to take care of ourselves. if we heard a big storm was coming, and we were living near a creek or stream……. we would leave, we didnt need someone to tell us. WE KNEW already it was dangerous. People got warnings, and most ignored them because ” they didnt want to evacuate again…….” ohhhhh what a drag, and the alternative was……… deadly for some. now its open season on anyone you can paint the blame with? dont forget when you point a finger, 4 more are pointing right back at yourself.
The county is surely culpable here, but there’s plenty of blame to go around. I wonder how many have read the county’s approved catch basin plan from before the fire/flood that called for modifying several catch basin debris dams to allow fish to swim through (i.e. put an opening in the dam) and for actually removing several of the basins altogether. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
The official who, on the face of it, would appear to be ultimately responsible for the bungled Montecito evacuations was Sheriff Brown, who was re-elected a few months later despite his errors and his shameless deflection of blame. The county followed up the under-evacuation with a series of over-evacuations. And as we saw this week with the high speed pursuit by SBSD, the county alert system remains fundamentally flawed and inaccurate and/or the county simply does not know how to use it.
Another consequence of the flooding which hasn’t seen much attention is CA192 bridge repairs. 5 bridges are being repaired or replaced for $20 million, and a sixth one – the Arroyo Paredon bridge, a short, straight, single span two lane bridge – for $11 million. The bridge schedules all continue to slip – there’s no date of completion at all established for the Arroyo Paredon bridge. Maybe sometime next spring. Even if you were to accept the dollar value of the contracts overall, how do you explain the Arroyo Paredon bridge? It’s costing nearly 20% of the entire cost of the Carpinteria 101 widening project which includes four large bridges!
Your tax dollars at work.
Uh…who is Hayman…are you on the debris flow thread?
That fact that mud flows (and fires) happen is not the point. What is under review is what can a community reasonably do to ensure safety of its citizens, including not letting them build in areas which burn and flood, over and over and over, generation after generation. And for those who choose to live in those areas, how to minimize the threat to their lives when another disaster is threatened?
Well, it seems that the County management didn’t have enough funds to clean and expand the catch basins but they certainly thought that they had enough funds to pay the nice salaries and benefits enjoyed by them. And, as was pointed out, the County is already technically bankrupt if you consider the unfunded obligations incurred for employee pension obligations.
The broader question is, where is Mona Miyasato? She’s the Chief Executive Officer. We never see or hear from her. Is she going to get in front of this issue and lead? Or is she too busy hitching all the wagons together to make that predictable circle?
Mona Miyasato
COUNTY EXECUTIVE OFFICER (2015)
Regular pay:$234,342.78
Overtime pay:$0.00
Other pay:$15,506.49
Total pay:$249,849.27
Benefits:$89,316.56
Total pay & benefits:$339,165.83
Miyasato is the best thing that ever happened to this county. She is a straight shooter and a budget hawk. Leave her alone. It is your elected county board of supervisors that give the directions in this town. Talk to them. Make them accountable.
Best to talk to Das Williams aka: Dohassen Gault-Williams who apparently needs $51,600 worth of benefits:
Supervisor Elective (2017)
Regular pay:$56,402.00
Overtime pay:$0.00
Other pay:$12,556.00
Total pay:$68,958.00
Benefits:$51,644.00
Total pay & benefits:$120,602.00
Yeah, but he never ever talked about putting money to Montecito that I can recall, it was always about North County roads wit deteriorating pavement–to serve his needs and the needs of his friends and neighbors. Which is understandable, but not true that he was her advocating for the South Coast.
I have not read the article (I suppose I have to now) but give me a break. The Thomas fire did not die down here until Dec 17 or so and the flood came about 3 weeks later. How much more could one except the County to do in such a short time? Why do most of us live here – for the natural beauty? Is it really worth further gutting of drainages and damming them up? You would rather look like LA? In preparing for the winter, I do not blame the County. The flood warning however was problematic.
Wow. So you have no idea what facts were presented, what the specific issues are, what the conclusions were, and yet you have formed an opinion on the matter? This is exactly what’s wrong with our society. People too lazy to read or research but instead browse a headline, parrot some host and then stick to their guns no matter what. The older I get the less faith I have in people. Have we really become this willfully ignorant? Idiocracy.
The article (which I read as a subscriber) was a hit piece and an example of the new LA Times aggressive attitude. Living here I know that NO ONE in this town would have approved the building of the number and size of catch basins that the article claims were appropriate. I know that NO POLITICIAN would have supported this effort. The story is another whine fest after the fact cheap shot. But people in Montecito have big pull. Their injuries are so much worse than those folks who suffer without housing, medical care, decent food or proper schools for decades. Really crap.
seriously guy? the investigation by the times has been ongoing since the event, pre dating the new owner. you should be thankful that someone/some entity is doing some real investigating on the matter as your precious news supress and other local blog barneys haven’t bothered to touch this story with a 10 foot pole. so, in essence, quit your whine, baby. a ‘hit’ piece? sounds like you’re hitting the bong bud.
Santa Barbara Country is already bankrupt. Unfunded pension liabilities are one billion dollars.
Seriously. The story notes that the government agencies had long ago identified the needs and dangers of the creeks. They had even kept them clean over time. But the people who live near these properties and the developers who want to put up more and more housing block such functional approaches (i.e., the paving of the LA River worked to control the dangers of runoff down there after decades of devastation but it would never be accepted here). We can’t even build freeways without decades of delay and condescension to the wealth of that community. Now that their special place has been damaged they are immediately ready to blame government. It is entitlement mentality of the highest rank. (And please try to act as an adult without the ad hominum attacks. Whether I am a “guy” or an “hitting the bong bud” is unknown to you and irrelevant to the discussion.)
yes, identified by the government agencies of the long distant past, not the current lazy lackeys that are doing the ‘work’ these days. just look around. do you see a well kept, well managed, weed free, pothole free, smooth running government around here? i did not think so. i hike all of those hills. been going up there for over thirty years. it doesn’t take a blind PERSON to see that the creeks were full of sediment, weeds, overgrown with junk. most municipalities would keep them at least clean, that is not the case here, at least in my own feeble observations. whats really missing from all conversation is the lack of funding to do what needs to be done so everyone turns a blind eye to what should be the real conversation. most think we don’t need the government to subsidize our existence but who came to the rescue? who did the grunt work? who funded it? who gives out the big grants for the big projects? where’s the DA get funding for her special projects? Where’s sbpd get money for DUI checkpoints? who’s paying for all the repairs? not locals. there is no money in this city or county and that is a fact.
What you describe is what real leaders do. They make tough decisions. The push real issues forward regardless of the pushback from a small and vocal minority. But we do not have strong leaders, we have the weakest bunch of officials I’ve ever seen. They are true wet noodles. Incapable of strength or even marshaling the resources towards a resolve. Their legacy is one of inaction and debt. They are inept. Please dont accept the status quo as correct RHS, instead we should all insist that our leaders do the right thing, not the easy thing. That’s their job and their duty.
SB Observer: OK. But in a democracy doing the “right thing” is defined as doing what the public wants (assuming the public is informed). I really doubt that any leader would have been able to rally community support for the physical disruption and cost such endeavors would have necessitated.
want to see some leadership? a good example of a sheriff? look at the sheriff of Las Vegas after the mass shooting-honest, stand up guy. Look at the Sheriff of Santa Rosa after the fire last year-honest, stoic, a leader. Look at the Sheriff from Butte County, stoic, leader, taking no guff and a leader of the people. Who can we describe like that here in SB County? Supervisor Adams in the North County is probably the only example and he is very unliked. It’s quite telling. (NO, i am not particularly an Adams supporter or member or North County but I challenge anyone here to give a better example or a true leader in this area).
SB Observer – My opinion regarding the preparations the County made to protect the community leading up to the flood is based on what I read in the local media, plus conversations with people familiar with that effort. My comments are rebuttals to people on this site who think the County was negligent in that regard and do not pertain to the LA Times article. You may now continue with your rant.
Bad logic. Those people living below Highway 192 were not given the opportunity to heed a mandatory warning. They were misled by a flawed “voluntary evacuation” warning. A tragic blunder by OEM.
You are so right!