Tracy Jo Brewer is reunited with her son who went to help rescue people on Tuesday night and was unable to get back to his mom until today. Some neighbors did the same, tired too, and wondering if the rains could really be as risky as the historic fire they had just escaped.
After the fire evacuations, Ellen related that she only returned to her house in Montecito on December 27.
Four children are among the dead, including a three-year-old girl who died alongside her mother.
All of the dead were killed by "multiple traumatic injuries due to flash flood with mudslides", authorities said.
"Realistically we suspect we are going to have the discovery of more people killed in this incident", Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.
About 700 rescue workers in helicopters and high-wheeled military vehicles, some with search dogs, were deployed in the hunt for the missing in a disaster zone littered with the remnants of hundreds of damaged or destroyed homes.
Monday, emergency officials again told residents of much of Montecito to leave.
Officials decided against sending a wireless alert as the fire raged. Some had left, many hadn't - and then scrambled to do so after the opportunity had passed. "It's devastating. We've lost so many lives and it's a tiny community and nobody would've expected, certainly, I did not, that after we survived the fires and the rain came".
Their home sustained no major damage.
Unable to drive, they have been confined to their neighborhood ever since, most of the time without power or water.
The two must now decide what their next move will be and how to keep up with their daily lives.
She is survived by a husband and two adult children.
"We're retired so we're in no rush", said Steve Fisk. The couple had to previously evacuate during the California wildfires. "You never really know".
"It was hard on people to be gone from their home as long as they were prior to Christmas", he said.
"She's leaving a huge void".
"It's not just a wealthy community", DeGeneres said.
"I thought I was dead for a minute", she told them before an ambulance spirited her away.
The 17 victims range in age from 3 to 89, all residents of the scenic coastal community northwest of Los Angeles. Troy looked out the window and the sky was glowing orange.
"It was a woman's body", she said.
The glow turned out to be a gas fire set off by the mudslide. She told Xinhua: "It was scary".
Troy changed out of her mud-caked clothes and exchanged her Crocs for boots.
Santa Barbara County announced the new evacuation order in a press release at 7:30 p.m. local time Thursday evening.
"First we got burned out at our ranch that caught on fire and now we're flooding, so the last month has been pretty bad", said Charles Stoops, as he stood in front of his house, which was surrounded in mud 3 feet (nearly a meter) deep.
They waited inside. Troy tried to meditate.
At dawn, she went outside.
He was two blocks from home when he heard a rumble that he realized was the mudslide he feared. The firefighters returned later and helped Troy, her sister and brother-in-law, carrying dogs through the mud.
Montecito is best known as a getaway for the rich and famous - the median home price among current listings is more than 4 million dollars (£2.9m) - although there are also working families living in modest houses and apartments. The Rohters have been longtime benefactors of the college in Santa Paula.
"Everything right now is rumor", she said. The McManigals' neighborhood was under a voluntary evacuation order.
"Everyone was saying to me, 'How's your property?' " she said. Wilson reported form Washington.
Biasotti and Ufberg reported from Montecito and Santa Barbara.
13 January 2018
13 January 2018
13 January 2018
13 January 2018
13 January 2018
13 January 2018
13 January 2018
13 January 2018
13 January 2018