Death toll rises to 17 and crews continue searching for survivors and more victims
Personnel with the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office have been assisting Santa Barbara County officials in the Montecito flooding disaster. As of Wednesday, 17 people were confirmed dead. (Urban Hikers / Noozhawk photo)
Seen from the air, the magnitude of the natural disaster becomes overwhelming.
That’s something Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown learned first-hand Wednesday as he, County Executive Officer Mona Miyasato and others took a helicopter tour of the devastation.
“What we saw, even though we have been working this incident for several days now, and we’re very familiar with what had happened, it was still very stunning to see the extent of the devastation, to see the breadth of the area that has been impacted so terribly,” Brown said at an afternoon press briefing.
He had earlier described the scene on the ground as “like a World War I battlefield.”
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