LOS ANGELES--Authorities in Southern California lifted evacuation orders on Thursday for more than 60,000 people living adjacent to fire-scarred foothills and mountain slopes along the Santa Barbara coast as rains and the threat of dangerous mudslides abated.
The evacuation was put into effect on Tuesday in the same general area where torrential rains in January unleashed cascades of mud, boulders and other debris that killed 21 people, injured dozens of others and damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes. Most of that devastation occurred in the affluent hillside community of Montecito, 85 miles (137 km) northwest of Los Angeles, in a region where vast swaths of the coastal landscape were stripped of vegetation by huge wildfires in December.
In the aftermath of that disaster, authorities instituted a policy of enforced evacuations in slide-prone areas of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties whenever forecasts call for downpours that might exceed the capacity of the region's catchment and drainage systems to control flash floods.
The latest Pacific storm, the third in two weeks, had been expected to drench local mountainsides with up to 10 inches (25 cm) of rain, and some street flooding occurred in Montecito, said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the unified incident command. By late Thursday, showers had subsided with no severe mudslides or debris flows reported, officials said.
"We haven't had any significant problems and the bulk of the rain has passed through the area, so there doesn't appear to be any significant threat," Ventura County sheriff's spokesman Sergeant Eric Buschow told Reuters.
A Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office notice said minor debris flows were still possible "but will not threaten populated areas."
