A somber candlelit vigil to remember the victims of the mudflow that inundated Montecito on January 9 took place at the Santa Barbara Courthouse just a few minutes after search officials concluded a meeting to brief the media on the job of finding survivors. Most of them drove from Earl Warren Showgrounds to the courthouse's Sunken Gardens, which were full to overflowing. At one point during the vigil, Congressmember Salud Carbajal enjoined the mourners to look around and observe that all the community was present, and Supervisor Das Williams — who took Carbajal's place in the 1st District, which includes Montecito — reminded everyone that not only the rich lived there.
At Earl Warren earlier, Sheriff Bill Brown said that after 130 hours of searching for survivors, the rescue task had this morning turned into the recovery of the dead. The search and rescue groups had carefully gone through the debris field that stretched from the foothills to the ocean looking for signs or sounds of life, he explained at the 4 p.m. media conference on Sunday, and the conclusion was inevitable. Mutual aid resources continued to arrive to help, he continued, and others that were not needed were being released.
Tom Fayram of County Public Works added that of the debris basins and creeks being dug out again for the next rainstorm, the Montecito Creek Debris Basin continued to be carefully gone through by search and recovery teams. The bulldozers, Fayram said, were beginning to return the roads to two-lane passageways.