Massive mudslides are hitting California

I believe this to be the self-same area where there were devastating fires before Christmas.

Is there something more to this than just climate disruption.

Drought, then wildfires — now massive mudslides are hitting California

One man who lives in Montecito said: "Mud came in an instant, like a dam breaking. It surrounded the house, two to three feet."

California mudslides kill at least 13 in area ravaged by wildfire

Mudslides, boulders and tons of debris killed at least 13 people on Tuesday in communities along California’s scenic coastline ravaged by a series of intense wildfires that burned off protective vegetation last month.

Reuters,

9 January, 2018

Heavy downpours struck before dawn on Tuesday after thousands of residents in Santa Barbara County along the Pacific coast north of Los Angeles were ordered to evacuate or urged to do so voluntarily, some of them for a second time since December.

But only 10 to 15 percent complied with mandatory orders, said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.

Emergency workers using search dogs and helicopters rescued dozens of people stranded in mud-coated rubble in the normally pristine area, sandwiched between the ocean and the sprawling Los Padres National Forest, about 110 miles north of Los Angeles.

The upscale communities of Montecito and Carpenteria, just outside the city of Santa Barbara, were hardest hit.

The mudslides toppled trees, demolished cars and covered blocks of quiet residential neighborhoods with a thick layer of mud, blocking Highway 101, a major north-south route along the coast.

“The best way I can describe it is, it looked like a World War One battlefield,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said at a news conference.

The death toll could rise, with rescue workers still picking through dozens of damaged and demolished homes in the search for survivors, Brown said. At one point on Tuesday, at least two dozen people were missing, but Brown said later in the day that it was not clear how many had been located.

About 300 people were stranded in a canyon. Local officials, using borrowed helicopters from the U.S. Coast Guard, were working to airlift them out, Brown said.

 

THIGH-HIGH MUD

The number of fatalities surpassed the death toll from a California mudslide on Jan. 10, 2005, when 10 people were killed as a hillside gave way in the town of La Conchita, less than 20 miles (32 km) south of the latest disaster.

The threat of mudslides had prompted the county to order 7,000 residents to leave their homes ahead of a powerful rainstorm and to urge 23,000 others to evacuate voluntarily.

The mudslides swept through both the mandatory evacuation zones and areas where people were urged to voluntarily leave, Brown said.

Brown, in response to questions of why some places were not part of the mandatory evacuation zone, said it was not possible “in a situation like this to define to the house or to the block or to the neighborhood” where a mudslide might occur.

The county set up an evacuation shelter at Santa Barbara City College, where some people showed up drenched in mud, and also provided a place for people to take their animals.

Last month’s wildfires, the largest in California history, left the area vulnerable to mudslides. The fires burned away grass and shrubs that hold the soil in place and also baked a waxy layer into the earth that prevents water from sinking deeply into the ground.

Some local residents had to flee their homes due to the fires last month and again this week because of the rains.

Among them was Colin Funk, 42, who sat up watching mud and debris approaching his Montecito house overnight and fled on Tuesday morning with his wife and three young children as thigh-high mud approached the front doorway.

“We started looking around and that’s when we saw parts of roofs and there was a body against our next door neighbor’s car,” Funk, who works as a financial adviser, said by telephone.

“I feel lucky,” Funk said. “Some people lost their lives in my neighborhood.”

Television personality Ellen DeGeneres, who is among a coterie of celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Rob Lowe who own homes in the upscale community of Montecito, posted a photo on Twitter of a roadway choked with mud and brown water.

“This is not a river,” DeGeneres wrote on Twitter. “This is the 101 freeway in my neighborhood right now. Montecito needs your love and support.”

Oprah Winfrey, who also lives in Montecito and had left her home during the wildfires, had not posted about the mudslides as of Tuesday evening.

Some areas of Santa Barbara County early on Tuesday were pounded with more than a half-inch of rain in five minutes, a rate that far exceeds the normal flash flood threshold, officials said.

“Where are the frogs and locusts? We’re waiting for them,” Dominic Shiach, a restaurateur from Montecito who evacuated due to last month’s fire, said by telephone. He lives just outside the latest evacuation zone.

This is the 101 Freeway just east/south of Santa Barbara. From the south, i.e. Montecito and Ventura, it is the only major highway into or out of Santa Barbara. Following the denuding of the hills caused by the Thomas Fire, this is an epic disaster.

The Dying Earth: El-Nino in the Pacific

California mudslides and chaos offer a preview of what El Niño could bring

The storm that slammed into the high desert and mountains of Southern California this week was one for the record books.

LA Times,

17 October, 2015

Intense rain sent massive mudflows onto highways, picking up cars and pushing them into one another. Hundreds of vehicles were trapped in mud up to 20 feet deep; in some cases, motorists were stranded overnight.

In one spot in the Antelope Valley, the storm dumped 1.81 inches of rain in 30 minutes on Thursday, in what the National Weather Service described as a 1,000-year rain event.

"It's absolutely incredible," said Robbie Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

October storms are nothing new in the high desert. But experts say the intensity of the deluge is just the latest byproduct of the record temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

Thursday's storm was the result of a cutoff low, a slow-moving low-pressure system that gets pinched off from the jet stream and starts its own unpredictable trajectory, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at Stanford University.

The warm ocean temperatures — about 75 degrees on Thursday, at least 5 degrees above normal — produced more water evaporation and higher humidity levels. The storm system combined with the high humidity to create enough instability in the atmosphere to trigger the intense thunderstorms and torrential rainfall, Swain said.

The storm was part of the same system that hit Southern California more than a week ago, Swain said. It originally came in from the north, then moved east over the desert Southwest. From there, it "made the strange track of coming to Southern California from the east," he said.

On Friday afternoon, residents in the Cuyama Valley area of Santa Barbara County were dealing with a new round of flash floods and mudslides that trapped cars. The National Weather Service reported that Bates Ridge saw 1.18 inches of rain in 30 minutes."

Warming Pacific waters has been a topic of growing discussion among scientists in recent years. Amid much debate about the cause, some experts blame the warming for some sea life and bird deaths.

The storm was not related to El Niño, the warm weather pattern that experts say is expected to produce heavy rain in California this winter.

But John Dumas, a weather service meteorologist, said these storms offer a preview of what's to come.

The last major El Niño to hit California, in the late 1990s, caused deadly flooding, mudslides and other problems. Across Southern California, officials are racing to clear debris basins and make other preparations so that the region's flood-control systems can combat the expected El Niño downpours.

Thursday's storm shut Interstate 5 through the Grapevine and sent a sea of mud sweeping through country road.

One of the most dramatic scenes played out on Highway 58 east of Tehachapi. There, mudslides trapped 200 vehicles, including dozens of tractor-trailers and at least two tour buses filled with passengers.

In one harrowing video, a driver caught the moment the mud overtook vehicles on the 58. The man, Jose Antonio Vargas, frantically yells in Spanish, "Someone call 911! Someone call 911! Help! The cars are being inundated!"

Truck driver John Tate, 48, stayed overnight in his rig. Surveying the scene on the 58 from his still-stuck big rig Friday, Tate said, "It's like something you see on TV."

Tate had been driving from North Carolina to Salinas to pick up a load of strawberries. The rain came fast Thursday. Within five minutes, he said, 

everything was washed out. Soon, cars in front of him started floating by. He spent the night in his truck, watching the movie "Ghost Rider."

"It just happened so fast, I don't think anybody really had time to react," he said.

Trucker Shannon Doyle was driving east on the 58 when rain and hail poured down. As traffic ground to a halt, truckers began communicating with their radios.

"Everyone was saying, 'Can't see. Can't see,'" the Fresno resident said. "It was just a mess."

Doyle remained in his truck until 9 p.m. Thursday, when he finally mustered the courage to venture outside. As he and other truckers scanned the sea of mud and cars, Doyle saw four women, covered in mud from head to toe, gripping their purses and blankets, their feet sloshing on the highway.

Search and rescue crews appeared around midnight, followed by heavy equipment that began excavating the mud. About 2 a.m., a helicopter flew over the highway and shined a spotlight over the mountain.

By morning, crews had dug away enough mud to allow tractor-trailers carrying horses and cattle to drive away. At 9 a.m. Friday, Doyle was finally able to turn his truck around to head back to Fresno.

No injuries had been reported as of Friday afternoon, but crews were still plowing through the mess. The highway will be closed between Mojave and Tehachapi for several days, officials said.

Workers were scraping the 58 and clearing an approximately mile-long stretch of mud, debris and stacked vehicles, said California Highway Patrol Officer Robert Rodriguez.

In all, the storm left an estimated 300,000 cubic yards of mud and debris on major roadways, including the 58, officials said.

U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer on Friday sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Army Corps of Engineers asking them to describe the measures taken to prepare for floods and mudslides.

"Given four years of historic drought, a devastating fire season, and likelihood that a strong El Niño will bring heavy rains to California, the risk of flooding is dangerously high," the California senators wrote. "We are already seeing the potential for disaster."

Super typhoon Koppu heads for northern Philippines, prompting storm alerts

A typhoon is heading straight for the main Philippine island of Luzon, prompting storm alerts in nearly 20 provinces and placing army and police units on standby.

ABC,

18 October, 2015

With winds at the centre of 130 kilometres per hour, Typhoon Koppu was about 585 kilometres east of Aurora province, in the country's north-east, and moving west at 15 kph.

Tropical Storm Risk forecast it would gain strength overnight.

"We have placed military and emergency workers on alert," said Alexander Pama, executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

UNICEF Philippines said it had supplies ready for 12,000 families in areas the storm was expected to hit, including the Cagayan province.

An average of 22 typhoons hit the Philippines every year.

In late 2013, super typhoon Haiyan, the strongest-ever to hit land, struck central areas, killing more than 6,300 people and leaving millions homeless.

Efleda Bautista: Tacloban after Typhoon Haiyan

Efleda Bautista says two years after being hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan, poor people in the Philippines are still living hand to mouth in temporary accommodation while they wait for the government to come to their aid.

El-Nino conditions in the Pacific

This shows the tropical cyclones in the Pacific with lots of wind around New Zealand and Australia.

Things are drying out very, very quickly here

This is a round-up from around the country

Landslide in Sri Lanka after floods

"Those who deny abrupt climate change are worse than those who deny anthropogenic climate change. The latter can be dismissed easily. The former are more difficult to understand, and their denial is equally dangerous."

Guy McPherson

My heart aches for the people of a country I love.

Just days after we covered catastrophic drought in Sri Lanka now we have terrible floods.

I also feel great anger.

To the people who profess not to see rapid climate change - the deniers - (people like Nicole Foss - and yes, I will name name) I say open your damned eyes to what is happening.

Just because it hasn't come into your petty lives  it is already a fact for millions of people around the globe.

100 dead and hundreds more missing after devastating landslide buries homes in 30 feet of mud on Sri Lankan tea plantation

• Landslides triggered by monsoon rains swept away dozens of homes on tea estate and sections of national highway

• One witness heard noise 'like thunder' as part of mountainside collapsed, burying homes in 30 feet of mud
• Shopkeeper: 'Before my eyes, I could see houses crumbling and getting washed downhill. It all happened very quickly'
• Hundreds of soldiers dug with hands and excavators in desperate hunt for survivors in mounds of mud and rubble

the Daly Mail,

29 October, 2014

Around 100 people have been killed and hundreds more are missing feared dead after mudslides triggered by monsoon rains washed away their homes on a Sri Lankan tea plantation, disaster officials said.

One witness spoke of hearing a noise like thunder as part of a mountainside collapsed onto the estate, burying homes in 30 feet of mud.

Hundreds of soldiers, who initially used their hands to dig for survivors, had switched to operating excavators by evening, but hopes faded of finding anyone else live.

'What I gathered is that about 100 people have been buried alive,' Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told AFP after visiting the site in the eastern Koslanda region.

'There is no chance they could have survived,' said the minister, as other officials said 16 people were confirmed dead. 

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An excavator moves mud and debris after landslides triggered by monsoon rains washed away dozens of homes on a Sri Lankan tea plantation, burying around 100 people alive and leaving hundreds more missing feared dead

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One witness spoke of hearing a noise like thunder as part of a mountainside collapsed onto the estate, burying homes in 30 feet of mud

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Obliterated: Sri Lankan men survey the damage to their homes on the tea plantation, about 140 miles east of the capital, Colombo

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Shock and awe: Crowds gather to watch the rescue operation after the mudslide at the Koslanda tea plantation in Badulla distr

'Initially we estimated the missing number at 300, but most of them were at school or work,' the minister said, although other reports said more than 250 were still unaccounted for.

'We have already started relief operations to provide them with shelter and food. Even the office where records were kept had been damaged,' the minister said.

The region's top military official, Major General Mano Perera, said 302 people, including 75 schoolchildren, whose homes were destroyed in the mudslide were being looked after at two schools in the same area.

 

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Search and rescue: About 500 military personnel and civilians were hunting for survivors with the help of heavy earthmoving Бequipment

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Disaster zone: Landslide-hit homes are buried under rubble with their roofs slightly visible, while people watch the rescue operations

The mudslide hit at a time when most people were at work and children were already in school, leaving mostly the elderly and the very young at home.

The military officer said about 500 troops had been deployed in the area to carry out the search for victims.

Kumara said 16 bodies have so far been recovered from the disaster around 200 kilometres (125 miles) east of the capital, Colombo.

'We have reports of 140 houses getting washed away in the mudslides,' Kumara dded  

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Officials said the mudslide struck after schools opened and tea plantation workers were supposed to be at work, but bad weather may have prompted some to stay home

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The landslide began at about 7.45 am (2.15pm GMT) and lasted about 10 minutes, an official said, adding that 'some houses have been buried in 30 feet of mud'

Part of a mountain appeared to have collapsed onto the cluster of homes belonging to the tea plantation workers and their families below, leaving no trace of them, an AFP photographer at the scene said.

Shopkeeper Kandasamy Prabhakaran, 34, said he heard a noise like thunder and then saw houses being washed away by tonnes of mud.

'Right before my eyes I could see houses crumbling and getting washed downhill,' Prabhakaran said. 'It all happened very quickly.'

President Mahinda Rajapakse ordered troops to deploy heavy equipment to speed up the rescue efforts, his office said.

 

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Catastrophe: The mudslide struck at around 7.30am at the Meeribedda tea estate in Badulla district, 135 miles east of the capital, Colombo, wiping out homes and sections of national highway

Military sources said they expected more heavy machinery to reach the site, but damage to roads as well as heavy rain and mist were slowing them down.

Sections of several national highways have also been washed away by the rains and a train was stuck after a mountain slope crashed onto a railway line.

The landslide began at about 7.45 am (0215 GMT) and lasted about 10 minutes, Perera said, adding 'some houses have been buried in 30 feet of mud.'

Authorities have begun checking on the number of people who were in their homes when tragedy struck.

Kumara said the mudslide struck after schools opened and tea plantation workers were supposed to be at work, but bad weather may have prompted some to stay home.

The area is prone to mudslides and residents had been repeatedly warned to move to safer areas as monsoon rains lashed the region, the Disaster Management Center said.

Thirteen people were killed in mudslides in and around Colombo in June.

Cyclonic winds that accompanied the monsoon in June last year killed 54 people, mostly fishermen.’

Bangladesh to export 50,000 T rice to Sri Lanka

Reuters,

27 October, 2014

Oct 27 (Reuters) - Bangladesh will export 50,000 tonnes of rice to Sri Lanka for the first time under a government-to-government deal at $450 a tonne including cost, freight and insurance, Food Minister Mohammad Karmul Islam said on Monday.

Strong output and good government stocks have prompted the Bangladesh government to initiate the plan to export rice.

"We have sufficient stock, and our production is also good. So there will be no crisis due to rice export," a Bangladesh food ministry official said.

In Sri Lanka, rice prices were up 36 percent by the end of September from a year ago as production dropped due to an 11-month drought, considered by experts to be its worst in recent history.

Sri Lankan Agriculture Minister Mahinda Yapa Abeyawardene, who said in August the country would have to import rice , told Reuters on Monday that it had already imported 40,000 tonnes since August.

A team from Sri Lanka will come soon to Dhaka to settle the deal, said the Bangladesh official, who asked not to be named.

Bangladesh exports a small quantity of aromatic rice, but this government deal would be its first export of non-fragrant coarse rice.

Bangladesh aims to produce more than 34 million tonnes of rice in the current year, up from nearly 33.5 million in the previous year. Its reserves have risen to more than 1.4 million tonnes from nearly 1 million tonnes a year earlier.

The world's fourth-biggest producer of rice, Bangladesh consumes almost all its production to feed its population of 160 million. It often needs to import rice to cope with shortages caused by natural calamities such as floods or droughts.

Although it did not import rice in the last two years, Bangladesh was ranked as the fourth-largest importer of the grain by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2011, with a volume of 1.48 million tonnes.

Late in 2012, the government was considering lifting a four-year old ban on rice exports to support farmers as record crops and bulging domestic reserves pushed prices below production costs.

But prices soared in January 2013, and the government backed away from scrapping the export ban.

Sri Lanka's Finance Ministry has already reduced taxes on rice imports in April and on pulses in July to help mitigate the effects of this year's drought on the market

From June. This is no denuded landscape

Extreme weather in California

Extreme Weather: Flash Floods Cause Devastating Mudslides in California

Search and rescue operations are underway to locate people who may have been swept away.