California mudslides: Rescuers dig for six hours to save teen as fatal slides leave dozens missing
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A teenager has been pulled from a pile of muddy debris after being found by rescue dogs in California mudslides that have killed 15 people and left up to two dozen missing.
Key points:
- Residents dug from mud and plucked from rooftops with death toll expected to rise
- Rescue dogs and thermal-imaging equipment used in search for survivors
- Montecito Inn, built by Charlie Chaplin, and Oprah's home are among affected properties
Rescue crews with thermal-imaging equipment have searched the hills around wealthy Santa Barbara for survivors after rain-driven mudslides swept through the coastal community, destroying 100 houses and injuring 28 people.
One resident who fled his destroyed home said he found a baby "four feet down in the mud".
The slides damaged historic hotels and the homes of celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, who relish the area sandwiched between the ocean and the sprawling Los Padres National Forest, for its natural beauty and proximity to sprawling Los Angeles.
A 14-year-old girl was found alive after firefighters using rescue dogs heard cries for help from what was left of her Montecito home, The Los Angeles Times reported.
"I thought I was dead there for a minute," teenager Lauren Cantin, covered in mud, told NBC News after workers spent six hours rescuing her.
"I was screaming forever and ever and ever."
The wooded hillsides that once gave the residential estates a sense of seclusion were largely denuded by last year's historic wildfires, setting the stage for the massive slides that slammed into homes, turned highways into raging rivers and shredded cars into nearly unrecognisable tangles of metal after heavy rains.
Resident Berkeley Johnson said he fled to his roof as the slides destroyed his home before finding a baby on a neighbouring property.
"We were worried about a neighbour's house so we went over to see if they were OK and we heard a little baby crying," he said.
"We dug down and found a little baby, I don't know where it came from. We got it out, got the mud out of its mouth.
"I'm hoping it's OK, they took it right to the hospital. But it was just a baby four feet down in the mud, nowhere, just under the rock, so I'm glad we got it."
Between 12 and 24 people who were believed to have been in the area at the time of the slides remained unaccounted for, said Chris Elms, a spokesman for state firefighters.
About 500 law enforcement officers and firefighters were combing mud-covered neighbourhoods, using dogs, helicopters and thermal imaging equipment to locate missing people.
"We are still very much in active search and rescue mode," Mr Elms said.
The current death toll of 15 confirmed fatalities could rise, he warned.
"That's a fear. We are still very hopeful that we will locate people alive," he said.
Officials have ordered residents in a large swathe of Montecito to stay in their homes so that rescuers can better go about their work.
About 300 people were stranded in a canyon. Local rescue crews, using borrowed helicopters from the US Coast Guard, worked to airlift them out, officials said.
The county initially ordered 7,000 residents to evacuate and urged another 23,000 to do so voluntarily, but only 10 to 15 per cent complied with mandatory orders, said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
Charlie Chaplin's inn damaged
The slides closed several historic hotels, including The Four Seasons Biltmore, which had just reopened this week after repairing damage from the wildfires.
The courtyard of the 90-year-old Montecito Inn, built by silent movie actor Charlie Chaplin, was filled with a thick crust of debris driven by the slides.
Some undamaged businesses closed as they lacked water, gas and other supplies to operate.
"There are no customers," said Pierre Henry, owner of the Bree'osh Bakery Cafe Montecito, several blocks from the spot where a large mudslide crossed Coast Village Road as it moved toward the ocean.
"We have a lot of friends of ours, and they are in the other part of Montecito, and they don't have electricity, they don't have gas, water and they don't have internet.
"We are quite lucky."
The mudslides followed a violent rainstorm that dropped as much as 15 centimetres of precipitation in pockets north-west of Los Angeles, soaking ground that was left vulnerable after much of its vegetation burned in the state's largest wildfire last month.
'The house in back is gone'
Oprah posted a video on Instagram showing her wading through nearly knee-deep mud on her Montecito property.
"The house in back is gone," she could be heard saying as she inspected the damage.
The number of fatalities surpassed the death toll from a California mudslide on January 10, 2005, when 10 people were killed as a hillside gave way in the town of La Conchita, less than 30 kilometres south of the latest disaster.
Last month's wildfires, including the Thomas Fire, which became the largest in California history, left the area vulnerable to mudslides.
The fires burned away grass and shrubs that held the soil in place and also baked a waxy layer into the earth that prevents water from sinking deeply into the ground.
ABC/Reuters
Topics: weather, storm-disaster, united-states
