Nearly three years after the Montecito mudslide tragedy that claimed 23 lives, Santa Barbara County continues to keep a close eye on vegetation recovery, debris basins, flood control systems, and winter weather to ensure that a similar incident isn’t repeated.
On Dec. 17, community members from across the county were invited to join a winter preparedness virtual meeting during which experts and county officials provided updates on how the area has recovered and how conditions have improved since the Jan. 9, 2018, incident.
“We’ve been working very hard to create the right kind of resiliency projects, the right kind of flood control projects, in order to increase our safety as a community,” 1st District Supervisor Das Williams said in a pre-recorded message at the meeting. “I’m proud to say that the first of those projects is online: the expansion of the Cold Springs debris basin to be able to take more large material.”
Williams said the Cold Springs project will be followed by the Romera Canyon expansion project next year, and San Ysidro debris basin in 2022.
“Most excitingly, we’ve received FEMA grant funding, and we’ll be building the Randall Road debris basin next year in 2021,” Williams added.
These basins play a key role in flood control as they help direct and divert excessive water and debris flows.
The community also heard from Kevin Cooper, a biologist who has been monitoring vegetation and soil recovery since the Thomas Fire, which occurred shortly before and contributed to the Montecito mudslides.
Tracking the vegetation growth in the burned area from the Thomas Fire helps to determine the risk of future debris flows in the area, Cooper said.
“We’re entering our fourth rainy season, and we’ve had three good growing seasons up to now,” he said. “We’re on track to hit that five- or seven-year full recovery to pre-fire conditions of the watershed here.”
Cooper explained that when vegetation burns as it did during the Thomas Fire, it creates “totally unprotected soils,” which when hit with intense rainfall can become “the precursor to our debris flows.”
“So we can see how important it is for this vegetation to recover,” Cooper said.
County Flood Control Engineering Manager Jon Frye followed Cooper’s presentation, highlighting six debris basins in the area of the 2018 incident—four of which already exist and two of which are proposed but not yet built—that will aid in preventing another debris flow.
However, Frye also emphasized that such flows don’t only occur immediately following fires, and the risk is always present. He gave the example of the Santa Barbara Coyote Fire of 1964: A debris flow event occurred the first winter after the fire, but then another occurred about 4 1/2 years after the initial fire.
“So I think it’s important that we all remain vigilant and understand that we’re entering into winter after the Thomas Fire as well,” Frye said. “So recognize that these are high hazard areas and that we all need to remain alert.”
This article appears in Dec 24-31, 2020.