Montecito Ordered to Evacuate as Mudslide Danger Rises in California

CARPINTERIA, Calif. — Thousands of residents were ordered to quickly evacuate Montecito on Monday as another major California storm threatened to unleash dangerous mudslides, five years to the day that a deadly torrent of mud and boulders rushed through neighborhoods in the Santa Barbara County enclave.

Up to a foot of rain was expected to soak the already drenched hillsides there on Monday alone, with the area at high risk of mud flows because of recent wildfires that have made soils and vegetation less stable. The 2018 mudslide killed 23 people and turned the normally pristine mansion community into a disaster area.

“We’re in the midst of a series of significant and powerful storms,” Sheriff Bill Brown of Santa Barbara County said in a briefing. “Currently, we’re experiencing a storm that is causing many problems and has the potential to cause major problems across our county, especially in the burn scar areas.”

The Central Coast was the hardest hit region on Monday in California. In San Luis Obispo County, north of Santa Barbara, one person was killed by floodwater while trying to navigate a submerged road and a 5-year-old boy remained missing. Residents were evacuated from numerous communities because of flood risks as their streets turned into gushing streams.

At the Best Western Plus Carpinteria Inn, several miles southeast of Montecito, a steady stream of people clad in rain gear pulled up in SUVs packed with luggage and provisions. Some who had evacuated said they were surprised to be among those ordered to leave because their homes were not in burn scars.

In the 2018 storm that led to the devastating mudslide, officials had issued mandatory evacuation orders for about 7,000 residents in Montecito and voluntary ones for another 23,000, but many disregarded them because they had just returned home after being forced to leave during a wildfire.

Montecito is a popular haven for celebrities, including Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex; Oprah Winfrey; and Ellen DeGeneres, who posted a video on Twitter of a raging creek behind her house that she said “never flows, ever.”

“We need to be nicer to Mother Nature because Mother Nature is not happy with us,” Ms. DeGeneres said.

Evacuation orders were also in place in neighboring Ventura County, including in the tiny community of La Conchita, the site of a 2005 landslide around the same time of year that killed 10 people.

The latest in a series of atmospheric rivers struck most of California on Monday, drenching the northern part of the state in the morning and then lashing the Central Coast throughout the day. Southern California, which woke up to soggy skies before a reprieve, was expecting to receive a cascade of rain later Monday and into Tuesday.

The next round was also forecast to bring rain and some thunderstorms to Northern California on Tuesday.

In Santa Cruz County, about 70 miles south of San Francisco, more than 30,000 residents were evacuated as creeks and rivers topped their banks, threatened homes and washed away at least one bridge. Mudslides blocked two highways in the Santa Cruz Mountains that connect the region to the San Francisco Bay Area.

The flooding in the county besieged an area already reeling from some of the heaviest damage from recent storms. Just last week, the confluence of a storm surge, high tides and high surf collapsed piers and flooded hundreds of homes and businesses.

The storm’s impacts continued farther south along the state’s Central Coast, with evacuation orders along rivers in Watsonville and Monterey County.

Numerous roads were closed amid flash-flood warnings in San Luis Obispo County, where the 5-year-old boy remained missing after he and his mother escaped from a car that was starting to be swept away by floodwaters. His mother, who had been driving him to school around 8 a.m., was rescued by nearby residents, but the boy was carried away by waters coursing down a rising creek, said Tony Cipolla, public information officer with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.

Divers with the agency’s underwater search and rescue team scoured the nearby waters for hours, but had to call off the search around 3 p.m. when the rising waters and rapid current made it too dangerous, he said.

Rivers and creeks in the area were gushing like they hadn’t in decades, said Scott Jalbert, the county’s emergency services manager. “They’re pretty monstrous,” he said.

California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo shut down for the day. The university reported that students, faculty and animals were being evacuated from agricultural facilities with a reservoir about to breach.

In the nearby town of Santa Margarita, Tamara Snow Nyren said that for all her preparations the night before — building a fort of sandbags all around her home — she was not ready for Monday’s flooding.

“My God, I look out the window to my alley, and I saw a river coming down my alley,” she said.

Late Sunday, President Biden approved an emergency declaration for 17 counties in California, allowing for federal assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security in relief and rescue efforts.

Jill Cowan reported from Carpinteria, Calif., and Victoria Kim from San Francisco. Katya Cengel contributed reporting from Grover Beach, Calif.