A Rush to Find Survivors Amid the Mud of Southern California Enclave
January 11, 2018 by admin
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“We are still in the hopeful, optimistic mode that we can find survivors,” said Mike Eliason, a spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, which has rescued six people since the hillsides gave way.
Canine units worked their way along the Montecito and San Ysidro Creeks, where a large number of houses were swept away. The area near the creeks was the most treacherous, Mr. Eliason said, as creeks swelled with the sudden torrents of water mixed with ash from the fires, rocks and dirt.
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Kenneth Song/Santa Barbara News-Press, via Reuters
“Some single-story homes were obliterated, just wiped off the foundation,” he said. “Others had holes blown through from boulders.”
The mud also hid some dangers from rescue workers.
“We’ve gotten multiple reports of rescuers falling through manholes that were covered with mud, swimming pools that were covered up with mud,” Anthony Buzzerio, a Los Angeles County fire battalion chief, told The Associated Press. “The mud is acting like a candy shell on ice cream. It’s crusty on top but soft underneath, so we’re having to be very careful.”
Five highways remained closed on Wednesday, including rural, two-lane roads, said Tim Weisberg, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation. The main north-south roadway, the 101 Freeway, will be closed until at least Monday.
“There are some portions that look like a riverbed,” Mr. Weisberg said of the 101. “It’s a mixture of dirt, debris, boulders, rocks. In some areas it can be six inches or a foot deep.”
Extreme Rain Causes Deadly Mudslides in California
The mudslides have killed at least 13 people in a region devastated by fires last month.
By ROBIN LINDSAY on Publish Date January 9, 2018.
Photo by Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
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Ron Werft, president of Cottage Health, a hospital in Santa Barbara that has treated those injured in the mudslides, said the hospital had to shuttle personnel by boat and by air as a result of the closing of the 101, a crucial north-south artery.
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Under blue skies Wednesday, rescue workers made progress, clearing roads that had trapped residents in the area around Romero Canyon, northeast of Montecito. But the longer-term consequences were also becoming evident, including damage to water mains and smaller pipes that provide the area with water.
“We have no water currently in storage,” said Nick Turner, general manager of the Montecito Water District.
The water district instructed those residents still receiving tap water to boil it before using it for cooking or drinking.
How It Happens | Mudslides
A steep slope, made unstable by rain or fire, can give way without warning, creating a destructive torrent of rock and mud.
By Aaron Byrd, Leslye Davis, Henry Fountain and Catherine Spangler on Publish Date March 25, 2014.
Photo by Aaron Byrd/The New York Times.
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Using bulldozers and other heavy equipment, workers cleared trees, boulders, downed power lines, household items and building material that had been swept onto the roads.
“A little bit of everything you could imagine, including a kitchen sink,” Mr. Eliason said. “Literally a kitchen sink was found.”
Among the dead was Roy Rohter, 84, said Michael Van Hecke, a friend and the headmaster of St. Augustine Academy, a classical Catholic school Mr. Rohter founded in nearby Ventura. Mr. Van Hecke said he learned of his friend’s death from Mr. Rohter’s daughter.
“He was a real scrapper, an entrepreneur,” Mr. Van Hecke said. “He bootstrapped himself all the way up to a very successful life.”
The mudslide also injured Mr. Rohter’s wife, Theresa, at their home in Montecito.
Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the joint recovery effort, which involves 14 helicopters and nearly 500 personnel — including firefighters and emergency workers from several counties — said the affected area was nearly 20,000 acres.
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Among those who were reported missing on Tuesday were the father of a boy who was swept hundreds of yards downstream, and the father of a sailor stationed in Hawaii.
Montecito is home to mansions owned by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres, but most of the damage occurred to more modest homes in the flatlands.
The wreckage of the downpour, coming so soon after the wildfires, was not a coincidence but a direct result of the charred lands, left vulnerable to quickly forming mudslides. The wildfires, known as the Thomas Fire, burned over 280,000 acres last month spanning Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, and became California’s largest on record. The area has not received significant rain since last spring.
“I think most people are really shocked at the extent of the damage and how big the impact was to the area,” Sheriff Brown said in a television interview. “Although we knew that this was coming you couldn’t help but be amazed at the intensity of the storm.”
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Immigration Agents Target 7-Eleven Stores in Push to Punish Employers
January 11, 2018 by admin
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In a statement, 7-Eleven Inc., based in Irving, Tex., distanced itself from the situation, saying that the individual stores are franchises that belong to independent business owners, who “are solely responsible for their employees, including deciding who to hire and verifying their eligibility to work in the United States.”
“7-Eleven takes compliance with immigration laws seriously and has terminated the franchise agreements of franchisees convicted of violating these laws,” the company said.
If ICE hoped to make a bold statement, it could hardly pick a more iconic target than 7-Eleven, a chain known for ubiquitous stores that are open all the time and sell the much-loved Slurpees and Big Gulps. Many a 7-Eleven franchise has been a steppingstone for new legal immigrants who want to own and run their own small businesses.
Not all franchisees have been scrupulous about whom they hire. ICE called its Wednesday sweep a “follow-up” of a 2013 investigation that resulted in the arrests of nine 7-Eleven franchise owners and managers on Long Island and in Virginia on charges of employing undocumented workers. Several have pleaded guilty and forfeited their franchises, and have been ordered to pay millions of dollars in back wages owed to the workers.
“This definitely sends a message to employers,” said Ira Mehlman, the spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors more limits on immigration and stricter enforcement.
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According to ICE, federal agents served inspection notices to 7-Eleven franchises in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington State and Washington, D.C.
Employees at two 7-Eleven stores on Staten Island said that immigration agents visited the stores on Wednesday. But the agents were shown valid employment records with Social Security numbers, two workers at each of the stores said, and no one was arrested.
In all, 16 of the 98 stores visited on Wednesday were in the New York City area, according to an ICE spokeswoman, Rachael Yong Yow, who would not specify their locations.
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In Miami Beach, an employee at one 7-Eleven said that while no agents showed up at her store, her boss asked workers to make sure their employment records were up to date, in case ICE continued its visits. Agents dropped in on 7-Eleven stores in seven cities in southeast Florida, including Miami Beach, according to Nestor Yglesias, an ICE spokesman; he, too, declined to identify specific stores.
Under President George W. Bush, ICE grabbed headlines by rounding up unauthorized workers at meatpacking plants, fruit suppliers, carwashes and residences. In a shift, the agency under President Barack Obama focused on catching border crossers, deporting convicted criminals and pursuing employers on paper, by inspecting the I-9 forms that employers are required to fill out and keep to verify their workers’ eligibility.
By targeting 7-Eleven franchisees and their workers on Wednesday, ICE under Mr. Trump appeared to be melding the approaches of his two predecessors: Go after employers while also detaining employees whom agents encountered without work authorization.
One of the biggest workplace immigration raids, in May 2008, resulted in the detention of nearly 400 undocumented immigrants, including several children, at an Iowa meatpacking plant. Sholom Rubashkin, the chief executive of the Agriprocessors plant, which was then the largest kosher meatpacking operation in the country, was eventually convicted of bank fraud in federal court.
President Trump commuted Mr. Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence last month, after years of lobbying by a number of prominent lawyers and politicians who considered his term unduly harsh, and perhaps even anti-Semitic.
Correction: January 10, 2018
An earlier version of this article misstated when nearly 400 people were detained in an immigration raid at an Iowa meatpacking plant. The raid was in May 2008, not July.
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