After weeks of rushing to clean up the catastrophic results of the Montecito mudslides, things are starting to return to normal in Santa Barbara County, and local officials are putting their attention back on the smaller messes they need to clean up.
The Lompoc City Council decided to rustle up the Santa Ynez Riverbed, rubber stamping Lompoc Police Department Chief Pat Walsh’s preliminary plan to evict the homeless population and clean out the little shantytown there at the Feb. 6 meeting.
Walsh said the riverbed was like “the Wild West,” and he ain’t wrong. After a dispute between two of the riverbed’s occupants turned violent in November of last year, leaving one dead by gunshot wound, Lompoc police confronted the suspect, who pulled his gun on the officers.
Talk about the O.K. Corral, that guy went down in a hail of bullets from Lompoc police.
The riverbed’s homeless encampment is a matter of public safety, Walsh argued, but he also said that the eviction and cleanup should be handled “in a compassionate manner.” He also called on pretty much everyone else to help out too:
“I’m asking our whole community to address these issues, from county mental health, housing authority, transitional mental health, drug and alcohol rehab, business owners, residents, our schools, and our churches. I think we all have a role to play in this,” Walsh said at the meeting.
Well, yeah, chief! Everyone’s going to need to pitch in if a whole crowd of homeless folks—including families with kids—are kicked out of the homes they’ve had to make out of necessity. There’s no simple solution to this problem.
As Walsh pointed out, homelessness is a multi-pronged issue. Housing, mental health, addiction, and poverty are all wrapped up in the equation.
To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how well equipped local government is to tackle such a problem.
For example, just before the storm that brought the Montecito mudslides hit, the county’s Office of Emergency Management and Sheriff’s Office released conflicting evacuation warnings and orders. Of the 21 dead from the disaster, at least 12 of those lived in the area that the Sheriff’s Office said was under a “voluntary” evacuation, whereas the county’s declaration said it was under a “mandatory” evacuation, according to reporting by the LA Times.
On Feb. 10, the Sheriff’s Office and county announced their new and improved maps and method to betters respond to and alert the public about disasters like mudslides.
One big, obvious change was that they’re no longer using the word “voluntary” for evacuations. Sheriff Bill Brown told the LA Times that residents “misinterpreted” the “measure of safety,” focusing more on the word “voluntary” over “evacuation.”
County officials have told Sun reporters that “voluntary” never really meant voluntary, and that locals should begin evacuating even if officials release just a warning.
Boy it sucks when you were wrong, especially when that mistake may have left people dead. Sheriff Brown didn’t shy away from that unfortunate truth at a community meeting on Feb. 8, either.
“All of us in retrospect, and in 20-20 hindsight, have to answer the question honestly: Was what we did sufficient on January the 8th? And obviously, in retrospect, it was not,” he said.
So, if something as vital as an emergency evacuation plan can have these unintended consequences, what about displacing dozens of Lompoc’s homeless population? It’s hard to say.
It could be that doing nothing would be worse in the long run, just ask the sheriff.
The Canary is glad it doesn’t have to make these decisions. Send your thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 15-22, 2018.