Around three in the morning of January 9, the mountain that looms over Montecito in effect melted and rushed down upon the town. The water and mud moved at such speed that boulders the size of automobiles skipped along their surface. Cars parked up in the hills were caught and dragged down for miles until finally deposited in the ocean. Over the next week or so, first responders dug out twenty-three bodies from the mud. Two were never found. Some of the dead were never honestly counted, including the bodies of old people found weeks later, still in their armchairs, depleted oxygen tanks beside
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