Edhat Staff
Screenshot of the Evacuation Order Map
All Evacuation Orders Lifted for Santa Barbara County Tonight
Effective 6 p.m. January 15, 2019
The National Weather Service has advised that critical rain rates did not materialize over the area as expected. Showers are expected through late Tuesday night, but rainfall is not anticipated to reach critical levels to cause debris flows. However, a high surf advisory remains in effect until 8 p.m. Friday, January 18.
Another weather system is expected to move through the Santa Barbara south coast Wednesday evening, January 16 through Thursday, January 17. While this storm has significant total rainfall rates, the system currently is not forecast to have rain intensity rates that will exceed thresholds that could cause a debris flow.
The evacuation center at Goleta Valley Community Center will be closed. If there are questions concerning animal sheltering, please call (805) 681-4332.
If evacuated residents who are returning to their residences have a need for wheelchair or other specialized transport needs, call Easy Lift at (805) 681-1180.
For additional information, please go to www.ReadySBC.org or call the County’s Emergency Call Center at (833) 688-5551.
EVACUATION ORDER
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office has issued an EVACUATION ORDER due to the approach of a rainstorm the National Weather Service forecast to be capable of producing debris flows in Santa Barbara County below burn areas. The evacuation order is in effect from Tuesday January 15, 2019 commencing at 10:00 AM. This evacuation order applies to debris flow risk location below the Sherpa/Whittier and Thomas fires burn areas. Go to the evacuation order map now posted on ReadySBC.org for specific evacuation order locations. The storm is expected to subside Tuesday night, another storm of similar intensity is expected to arrive Wednesday evening.
While the evacuation order is for tomorrow morning, now is the time to gather family members, pets, and essential items so that you can evacuate no later than 10:00 AM. In the event of a significant debris flow, people living adjacent to the evacuation order areas, particularly in Montecito, Summerland and Carpinteria, could become stranded if roads become damaged or impassible. Residents in these adjacent areas should be prepared for this possibility and consider leaving the area during the evacuation.
ROAD CLOSURES
Due to the configuration of the Evacuation Areas aligning with creeks and channels, road control points will be limited. Nevertheless, the evacuated areas are closed. Law enforcement will be using roving patrols to protect property and enforce the closures. Anyone in these areas who does not belong will be questioned. Those who live adjacent to evacuation zones should avoid using roads in those areas. These roads could become unsafe during peak periods of rain. People from outside the evacuated communities should avoid the general area during this emergency.
Stay on top of road closures by checking out the County Public Works Road Closure website here. State Highway road information is available on the Caltrans website here.
EVACUATION CENTER
Red Cross Evacuation Center will be located at Goleta Valley Community Center at 5679 Hollister Ave in Goleta, CA.
People who need assistance evacuating animals should contact the Animal Hotline: 805-681-4332
Cats/dogs: Santa Barbara Humane Society, 5399 Overpass Road
Other types of small animals: Santa Barbara County Animal Services, 5473 Overpass Road
Large Animals: Earl Warren Showgrounds (staffed by Equine Evac)
Animals will be accepted beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 15.
Visit Santa Barbara has again prepared a list of hotels offering special rates for evacuees.
SCHOOL CLOSURES
The following schools will be closed: El Montecito Pre-School and Crane Country Day School.
Lady of Mount Carmel, Montecito Union School and Laguna Blanca Lower School will have school at alternate sites.
All other schools, including Carpinteria Unified Schools, will remain open.
RAINFALL RATES
Stay up to date with rainfall amounts in the burn areas by looking at the Santa Barbara County Flood Control real-time rain data.
STORM PREPARATION
During this rain event, Santa Barbara City residents should report storm drain blockages to 805-564-5454 and down trees to 805-564-5413. Dial 911 immediately if there is a threat to public safety.
Sandbags
Sandbags are available for pickup at the City’s Sandbag Pickup Station, 401 E. Yanonali St., from Tuesday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The City might extend hours depending on the volume of sandbags requested or if a Flood Warning is issued. Sandbags available to residents free of charge. Residents should bring their own gloves and shovels and be prepared to fill the bags they need.More information can be found at: Sandbag Information
Flood Preparation Tips
Learn how to prepare for a flood, how to prepare for evacuation, driving in flood conditions and what to do after a flood.
Get information in English here.
A Spanish language version is available here.
CONTACT NUMBER
If you need assistance, please call our Emergency Call Center at 833-688-5551
SIGN UP FOR ALERTS
Sign up for critical alerts at AwareAndPrepare.org. View the Santa Barbara County Debris Flow Risk Map here.
The City will also post information via Nixle Alerts, and posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Nextdoor. To sign up for Nixle, text your Santa Barbara zip code to 888777 to receive real-time alerts and advisors directly from Santa Barbara Police and other local agencies.
If power goes off, gas stations will shut down. Gas up now.
This ham radio operator does up-to-the-minute reports: https://twitter.com/ai6yrham?lang=en
To track rainfall rates per hour, go to this link which allow you to access all SB county rain gauges:
https://rain.cosbpw.net/home.php
THEN select the “1 hr” option at the rainfall section. This puts rainfall in units of inches per hour. If you see the values start to approach and/or exceed 0.5” on the ridges in your watershed the risk of flooding and debris flow starts to ramp up. Know your situation and know what’s happening above you if you are near creeks.
Yeti, relax. You’re reading WAY too much into it. If you look closely, “pink” is simply the color they chose to delineate major roads. The 118, 10, 5, 126, are all pink as well. Just a color. No one is shutting down freeways.
Well the pink roads all have something in common….. they are highways or freeways. 101, 217, 154 etc…..
I saw this on the news at 5 pm…
Take care of seniors…they don’t watch t.v.
Wish our local news was on with street names, not just maps for info on how or when to get them out…
And yellow is not a warning area. The yellow patches are all schools.
Keeping fingers crossed. Having hiked San Ysidro up to Camino Cielo a few times in the past two months, I know the canyon slopes still have large bare spots and the bottom of the creek is pretty smoothed over with sediment in places (very obvious 1 to 2 miles up from the trailhead on Mountain Drive).
Looking at the hourly weather forecast, it looks like TODAY’S storm is backing off. The doozy looks like Wednesday night at Midnight through noon Thursday may include many hours of predicted thunderstorm activity. This may be the big show and potential devastation.
The folks that have not evacuated are just waiting for confirmation of serious weather conditions fast approaching. This is pretty easy since the weather forecasts are very accurate hours out. Since once they evacuate, the police will not them back in, they are just waiting as long as they can. Remember all of the false threats of freeway and road closures for months after the slides last year? All of which did not materialize! IF the forecast for Wednesday night through Thursday morning, is accurate,
then they WILL evacuate tomorrow night.
Sorry Pstarsr: I don’t mean to insinuate that we can control the weather.. But, what else can explain why so many people in Montecito have NOT evacuated? It can only be because they do not feel a serious threat yet. Like you say, you can not control the weather or predict it indefinitely.. BUT, this is what the County OEM is doing.. and forcing people out of their homes as a result. I do agree that it makes a lot of sense for caution and prudence when lives are at stake. They made the right decision to force evacuations, but IF I was in one of those homes and watching the radar and predictions and did not feel that serious rainfall was imminent in the next 10 hours, I would probably still be there until the situation changes.
I bet that IF the predictions for major thunderstorms early Thursday morning for hours, then they may evacuate at that time.
Soon, we will all see in real time what happens.
Today was an appetizer with tomorrow being the main course. Rain intensity never exceeded 0.5”/hr for us today, but tomorrow may be different. Our soils are well saturated now. I wouldn’t chance it in an evac zone. Nature sets the terms, and you must choose to accept them.
Are these “Mandatory” evacuations?
gezzus jamesbond, yes they are GET OUT orders.
It looks to me like the yellow zones are places to shelter, for example Earl Warren Showgrounds and schools. It would be nice if they included a legend.
There is a legend, click the icon with 3 lines to see it. Yellow is schools.
US Forest Service crews and equipment are standing by to help, and SAR teams from NPS and BLM are at the ready. What’s that? Oh, right, they’ve all been furloughed. Well, this week’s Montecito Journal’s “JB” says most of his Community “doesn’t give a fig” about the shutdown, so…Have a nice day, JB.
I wonder how many warned to leave will actually go. Not many did on 1/09/2018.
FLICKA – this time, people are being ordered, not just warned, to leave, so hopefully that helps. Also, I think people are going to be a lot more aware and appreciate the danger more after having seen what can happen.
How many of the houses in the current evacuation zones were damaged last year? Since last year had 100-yr year intensity rates and was weeks after a fire, if your house wasn’t damaged last year it is very likely it will be safe this year. But if you have somewhere to go, it would be safest to leave. Just remember to take everything you need to be gone for days, not hours.
Both the Navy website and Windyty.com put the last two rains in a ho hum category, this one coming tomorrow has lots of red and lots of time. Windy puts this next storm as dumping over 5 1/2″ across the area. If you are going to call evacuation orders over the potential for 1-2″ of rain… seems contradictory to lift those 12 hours before the next ‘event’. I think the current hysteria is a knee jerk to last year’s tragic event (although there were several resevoirs involved as well), but if you’re going to err on the side of caution… be consistent.
It seems that the substantial rain hits late tomorrow night with thunderstorms starting at 11:00pm. That was last year’s scenario: heavy precip after everyone had gone to bed. It will be important to check the Vandenberg Doppler Radar and the 8km IR NE Pacific map before settling in tomorrow night if you are in a vulnerable location. I don’t like how they are downplaying the risk this far in advance.
11 a.m. KEYT news report today (Tues.) showed a Sheriff’s Deputy going door-to-door and asking people in the Montecito mandatory evacuation zone to leave. He seemed so so sad when he told the reporter that many people said they were going to stay and not evacuate today. I felt sorry for him. He looked like he was going to cry. He, other deputies, police, CHP, Search & Rescue, Fire Department personnel…to be put in danger trying to save people who refused to evacuate. Was that what he was thinking, or was he remembering the last time, and what he saw then?
That’s not an empty comment. I feel it’s a bona-fide question – one that I, too, have been wondering. Relax.
Bizarre to suggest some people won’t leave even though it’s a mandatory evacuation? Most didn’t pay attention last time and if you read what a deputy said about the reaction this time, “Many said they are staying”, maybe my comment doesn’t seem so “bizarre” now. Stubborn folks think they know more than those who warn them. As someone mentioned, if things turn bad responders are put in jeopardy rescuing them.
Rwelsh – are you saying that humans are to blame for the catastrophic weather?