The repopulation of Montecito over the past week has been a mass movement of fits and starts, challenged by congested roadways and the slow but steady reactivation of storm-damaged utility systems — the water, power, heat, cable, and Wi-Fi all too easily taken for granted during life before the worst natural disaster in Santa Barbara history.
Since evacuation orders were lifted across most of the 93108 zip code at noon on January 25, thousands of residents displaced by the flooding and mudslides of January 9 — and thousands more ordered out a few days later, for fear that lingerers would impede ongoing search-and-rescue efforts — have returned to their homes. Many were among the most fortunate, inconvenienced only by backed-up freeway off-ramps and adjacent surface streets, returning home to find SoCal Gas crews ready to turn on meters and relight pilots on natural gas appliances. Others had nothing to go home to, except perhaps a concrete slab where the family home once stood. Most returnees fell somewhere between those extremes.
“The damage is mostly just outside,” said homeowner Jim Dunn, who lives with his wife in the Oaks, a hard-hit neighborhood northeast of the intersection of Coast Village and Olive Mill roads. “Mud flooded the yard and seeped inside through the doggy door.” Since being allow to return home — and still without any utilities, as of Tuesday afternoon — the Dunns have been “digging the mud away from the [exterior] walls,” he said, “hopefully to prevent mold.” He paused to point at deep tracks in the mud field across his backyard. “See all the footsteps? That’s from [first responders] looking for survivors and missing people.”
