CARPINTERIA, Calif. — First came the fires. Now come the floods.
Heavy rains lashed the hillsides of Santa Barbara County on Tuesday, sending one boy hurtling hundreds of yards in a torrent of mud before he was rescued from under a freeway overpass. His father, though, was still missing. A 14-year-old girl was buried under a mountain of mud and debris from a collapsed home before being pulled to safety by rescuers as helicopters circulated overhead, searching for more victims.
Still, those children could count themselves among the lucky.
At least 13 people — and possibly more, the authorities warned — were killed on Tuesday and more than two dozen were injured as a vast area northwest of Los Angeles, recently scorched in the state’s largest wildfire on record, became the scene of another disaster, as a driving rainstorm, the heaviest in nearly a year, triggered floods and mudslides.
The wreckage of the downpour, coming so soon after the wildfires, was not a coincidence but a direct result of the charred lands, left vulnerable to quickly forming mudslides.
For residents and emergency workers, still weighing the devastation of the fires, it was a day of grim rituals resumed: road closings, thousands of evacuations, downed power lines, heroic rescues and a search for the dead.
For more read the full of article at The Nytimes
