The surging river of mud and boulders that engulfed swaths of Montecito from the mountains to the sea last week, killing 20, was a rare disaster – so rare, geologists say, that it may happen only once in a few hundred to a thousand years at that location.
But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen again this winter, said Ed Keller, a professor of earth science at UC – Santa Barbara. All of the communities below the scorched slopes of the Thomas Fire are at risk, he said.
“These areas are very vulnerable in the next two years to debris flows,” Keller said. “We could get another one right down Montecito Creek this year, if we get another big rainfall, depending on how much debris is left up in the basin. It’s not impossible.”
