Study: Debris Flow Warnings Were Confusing, Unconvincing
Victims' Families Furious at County Failures But Thwarted By Government Immunity
The final results of a study that measured the effectiveness of public warnings issued before the deadly 1/9 Debris Flow have confirmed what many in Montecito already knew — that the communications and evacuation notices they received from authorities were woefully inadequate in educating them to the extreme danger they faced. The study comprised a large community survey administered since May by the National Weather Service in partnership with the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety.
Researches received 404 responses from Montecito area residents ranging in age from teens to the retired. The vast majority — 90 percent — had registered with the County of Santa Barbara’s Aware & Prepare alert system prior to the debris flow. Fifty-three percent of respondents lived in what officials at the time defined as the “voluntary evacuation zone,” the area of Montecito south of Highway 192 where 19 of the disaster’s 23 victims were killed. Twenty-two percent lived in the mandatory evacuation area, and the remaining 25 percent said they were unsure in which zone they lived.
Respondents described being confused by the conflicting maps and written descriptions of the two evacuation areas provided by the County’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which differed from the regions along creek channels that officials also said were at risk. Residents said they were similarly confused by the term “debris flow,” the language used to describe the intensity of a storm that could trigger one, and the ambiguous cell phone alert they received in the midst of the chaos to “GO TO HIGH GROUND.” Eighty-three percent said they knew about the expected rainstorm; 62 percent had heard about the possibility of a debris flow.
