CALIFORNIA MUDSLIDES LEAVE 15 PEOPLE DEAD

Disaster caused by heavy downpours and last year’s wildfires, which burnt off protective vegetation

The deadliest mudslides in more than 10 years hit communities along California’s coast, killing at least 15 people on Tuesday and forcing many more from their homes.

Mudslides, boulders and tonnes of debris ravaged coastal cities after wildfires burnt off protective vegetation last year.

Heavy downpours struck before dawn on Tuesday after thousands of residents in Santa Barbara County, north of Los Angeles, were ordered to leave, some of them for a second time since last month.

But only 10 to 15 per cent complied with the mandatory orders, said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County fire department.

Emergency workers with search dogs and helicopters rescued dozens of people stranded in mud-covered rubble in the normally pristine area between the ocean and the sprawling Los Padres National Forest, about 175 kilometres north of Los Angeles.

The affluent communities of Montecito and Carpenteria, just outside the city of Santa Barbara, were hardest hit.

The mudslides toppled trees, demolished cars and covered blocks of neighbourhoods with a thick layer of mud, blocking Highway 101.

“The best way I can describe it is, it looked like a World War One battlefield,” Santa Barbara County sheriff Bill Brown said.

The death toll could rise with rescue workers picking through dozens of damaged and demolished homes in the search for survivors, Mr Brown said.

At one point on Tuesday at least two dozen people were missing and he said later that it was not clear how many had been found.

About 300 people were stranded in a canyon. Officials, using helicopters borrowed from the coastguard, were working to lift them out, Mr Brown said.

The county ordered 7,000 people to leave their homes before it rained and urged 23,000 others to leave voluntarily.

The county set up a shelter at Santa Barbara City College, where some people showed up drenched in mud, and also provided a place for people to take their animals.

Among those forced to leave their homes because of last month’s fires and Tuesday’s mudslides was Colin Funk, 42, who sat up watching mud and debris approaching his Montecito house overnight and fled on Tuesday morning with his wife and three children.

“We started looking around and that’s when we saw parts of roofs and there was a body against our next door neighbour’s car,” said Mr Funk, a financial adviser. “I feel lucky. Some people lost their lives in my neighbourhood.”

Television personality Ellen DeGeneres, one of the celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Rob Lowe who own homes in Montecito, posted a photo on Twitter of a roadway choked with mud and brown water.

“This is not a river,” DeGeneres wrote. “This is the 101 freeway in my neighbourhood right now. Montecito needs your love and support.”

In some areas of Santa Barbara County on Tuesday more than 1.2cm of rain fell in five minutes, a rate that far exceeds the normal flash flood threshold, officials said.

“Where are the frogs and locusts? We’re waiting for them,” said Dominic Shiach, a restaurateur from Montecito.

We started looking around and that’s when we saw parts of roofs and a body against our next door neighbour’s car COLIN FUNK Montecito resident