The record rainfall in California has soaked its steep hillsides, causing hundreds of landslides and heightening the threat to communities.
from a series of atmospheric rivers have saturated the steep mountains and bald hillsides scarred from wildfires along much of California's long coastline, causing hundreds of landslides this month., killing 23 people and wiping out 130 homes.Experts say California has learned important lessons from the Montecito tragedy, and has more tools to pinpoint the hot spots and more basins and nets are in place to capture the falling debris before it hits homes.
The most vulnerable areas are hillsides that have burned in the past two to three years with communities below them, said Jeremy Lancaster, who leads the California Department of Conservation’s geological and landslide mapping team.In 2018, the deadly mudslides in Montecito occurred about a month after one of the largest fires in California's history tore through the same area, charring 280,000 acres.
But basins, which can require a lot of land, can also disrupt the natural ecosystem and lead to beaches needing to be replenished by collecting sediment that flows out of the canyons, according to experts. After the 2018 mudslides hit Montecito, the Los Angeles Times reported that debris basins above the community were undersized and hadn’t been sufficiently emptied.
McElroy said he's still haunted by memories from 2018 but feels better, knowing that the community might be safer now.
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