Thousands gather to mourn Montecito mudslide victims as death toll climbs to 20
January 15, 2018 by admin
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Soon after the sun set over Santa Barbara, Ann Hagan grabbed a marker and wrote a short message to the 20 strangers who died in the devastating Montecito mudslides.
“In our hearts,” she wrote before signing her name on a whiteboard put up at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse.
Hagan was one of thousands of people who huddled at the courthouse late Sunday evening to take part in a candlelight vigil.
They came to pay tribute to the young and old — among them mothers, fathers, grandparents, small children — who did not survive when rainwater poured down fire-ravaged slopes and unleashed a deluge of debris into their neighborhoods.
“This is my home too,” said Hagan, 66, of Goleta. “Those people were a part of my community, a part of my family.”
As Supervisor Das Williams read out each victim’s name, some in the crowd wept. Others embraced. Many closed their eyes and bowed their heads, their faces illuminated by flickering candles.
“This is a healing experience for everyone here,” said Jennifer Adame, 44, of Santa Barbara. “Everyone feels frightened by the tragedies in the past two months.”
As the community struggled to cope with the tremendous loss, authorities said Sunday that they had transitioned from search and rescue to search and recovery. For days, they had scoured the devastation for signs of life. Now hope dwindled of finding more survivors in the muck.
“This decision was not made lightly,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told reporters Sunday afternoon.
Earlier in the day, authorities had announced that the death toll had climbed to 20. Searchers had found the body of the latest victim: 30-year-old Pinit Sutthithepa, whose 6-year-old son, Peerawat, was also killed. At least four other people, including Sutthithepa’s 2-year-old daughter, Lydia, still are unaccounted for.
Meanwhile, crews continued clear a two-mile stretch of mud- and debris-strewn U.S. Highway 101, which remained closed indefinitely.
Officials initially had expected to be ready to reopen the highway — a major north-south artery that carries about 100,000 vehicles through the Central Coast each day — on Monday.
By Sunday afternoon, Caltrans crews had removed 150 yards of debris from northbound lanes and 80 yards of debris from southbound lanes, Caltrans spokesman Jim Shivers said.
But officials said cleaning up one part of the freeway at Olive Mill Road was proving especially difficult because, as one of the lowest points in the area, it had served a magnet for water and mud.
About 75 people are assigned to the project, which is focused on what Caltrans calls “dewatering” — using pumps to suck up the mud and rainwater. Once all the mud and debris are removed, the pavement and overpasses will need to be evaluated for structural safety. Then lines will need to be repainted and signs and guardrails reinstalled.
By Monday, “we’ll have a better understanding of when the freeway will be open and when people can expect to drive it again,” Shivers said.
State Route 192, which cuts across the foothills, is also unsafe in places, and officials are trying to establish an alternate route as quickly as possible.
At least 296 buildings were damaged or destroyed by last week’s mudslides, officials said Sunday after a partial, preliminary inspection. In that count were 73 homes that were destroyed and 61 that sustained major damage.
Those numbers are expected to rise, since inspectors have completed about 35% of assessments of residential and commercial buildings.
On Wednesday, Santa Barbara County will open an assistance center at Calvary Chapel Santa Barbara to offer resources to help the community recover and rebuild.
At Sunday’s vigil, Lauren Watson, whose family put up the whiteboard they called the “healing wall,” said they planned to take the messages around the area starting Monday — to the Center Stage Theater, farmers markets and other places downtown. Watson said the wall may even travel to Ventura.
“We want to go to as many places as we can,” said his mother, Laura Watson. “It’s a beautiful thing to do for the community.”
michael.livingston@latimes.com
alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
UPDATES:
9 p.m.: This article was updated with information from the candlelight vigil.
5:20 p.m.: This article was updated to note authorities are moving into a search-and-recovery phase.
4:00 p.m.: This article was updated with a preliminary damage assessment.
2:45 p.m.: This article was updated with new information from a CalTrans official.
1:20 p.m.: This article was updated with new information from fire and CalTrans officials.
12:05 p.m.: This article was updated with new information about the candlelight vigil scheduled Sunday evening.
This article was originally posted at 10:25 a.m.
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Malik Jackson says Jaguars smacked ‘disrespectful’ Steelers in the mouth
January 15, 2018 by admin
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PITTSBURGH — The Jacksonville Jaguars are headed to the AFC Championship game, but nobody wanted to talk about that after they beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 45-42 on Sunday at Heinz Field.
Jaguars players instead wanted everyone to know that they were upset about the way the Steelers supposedly looked past them in anticipation of a rematch with the New England Patriots. Pittsburgh running back Le’Veon Bell‘s tweet on Saturday night, in which he said the Steelers would beat the Jaguars, was seemingly the final insult that angered Jaguars players.
Jaguars troll Steelers for looking ahead to Patriots
The Jaguars poked a little fun at the Steelers after the 7-point underdogs knocked off Pittsburgh to advance to the AFC Championship Game.
Jags’ Campbell hinted at 45-42 score last week
Jaguars DE Calais Campbell suggested a hypothetical score of 45-42 in an interview last week. After Jacksonville’s playoff victory over the Steelers on Sunday by that exact outcome, Campbell said, “I tell you, it just means we are on the right track.”
And boy, were some of them really angry.
“Coach [Doug Marrone] told us about that this morning,” defensive tackle Malik Jackson said. “It’s disrespectful. It’s stupid as f—, to be honest with you. You don’t give a team that came in here and smacked you in the mouth ammo to come out here and just be on you all day. We’re bullies. We don’t need to say we’re bullies. We don’t need to talk like we’re bullies. We’re not going to tell you what we’re going to do. We’re just going to smack you in the mouth, just like we did today.
“They talked. They said they were going to do this. They didn’t do anything. They’re waiting for the teacher to come break everything up. We stood there, and we smacked them in the mouth. We gave them what they wanted. They wanted us. We gave them what they wanted. Now look at them. They’re pissed that they called us out.”
Jackson was just getting warmed up, too. He wasn’t happy with Steelers safety Mike Mitchell‘s talking several weeks ago about beating the Patriots. Or head coach Mike Tomlin’s comment in December that the Steelers’ Dec. 17 game against the Patriots would determine where the next meeting would be played.
“It’s not [Steelers-Patriots in the AFC title game], but can you please ask them to give us the game tape they were watching to prepare for them so that we can use it and get better?” Jackson said. “Just give us their notes. We can really use them.
“For us, it wasn’t about getting into talking matches, trying to fight them, trying to do anything. We’re just trying to let the clock run out and go home while they go home and prepare for New England that they’ll get to play next week in imaginary land.”
Linebacker Myles Jack, who had an interception to set up one of Leonard Fournette‘s three touchdown runs, said defensive end Yannick Ngakoue sent him a screen shot of Bell’s tweet, which was posted after the Patriots beat Tennessee on Saturday night.
He wasn’t happy.
“You can’t overlook us, and that’s what we took as disrespect: that they were already looking ahead to next week while we were focusing on them,” Jack said. “It was weird because we had won the last game, and I guess they forgot about that.”
The Jaguars beat the Steelers 30-9 on Oct. 8 at Heinz Field, picking off quarterback Ben Roethlisberger five times. He threw for 469 yards and five touchdowns in the rematch, but the Jaguars picked him off once, and Ngakoue had a strip sack that linebacker Telvin Smith returned 50 yards for a touchdown. Cornerback Jalen Ramsey tried to downplay the anger in the locker room by saying that anything the Steelers players said had no impact on him or anyone else, even though that clearly wasn’t the case.
“Excuse my language, but we don’t give a f—,” Ramsey said. “We really don’t care. We knew what we were going to do. We don’t really be worried about all that. Y’all bring that to us. That’s honestly the first time that we hear about it. During the week, when y’all brought the Mike Mitchell thing to me, that was the first time I heard about it. We don’t care about none of that.
“Talking is cool. You can do all the talking you want on Twitter, to the media, all of that, but when you get on the field, you’re going to have produce. You’re going to have to show us what you’re really about. We’re confident because we know the work we put in. We know the blessings the Lord has given us. We’re going to go out here confident. We’re going to go out there swagged up.”
Steelers players strongly denied that they were looking past the Jaguars to the Patriots.
“You guys throw all that s— out there, as far as us overlooking them,” guard Ramon Foster said. “We practiced two weeks for Jacksonville. No f—ing way we overlooked them. C’mon. You know that answer.”
Said linebacker Bud Dupree: “Hell naw, we didn’t overlook them. They beat us the first time. We just couldn’t get it done. We tried. I thought we were going to win. We just had to make a stop for the offense. We couldn’t make a stop. We have Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback. We’re supposed to make a stop, give them a chance. We didn’t give them a chance.”
Jackson didn’t buy it, though, and he also had some strong words for Tennessee defensive lineman Jurrell Casey, who said after the regular-season finale between the teams that quarterback Blake Bortles would choke when the game was on the line.
Bortles led two fourth-quarter touchdown drives and made critical throws on each.
“He’s a dog!” Jackson said while breaking into a video interview between Calais Campbell and a reporter. “I want to know what Jurrell Casey has to say about him choking in big moments while you sit at home and watch us next week!”
Jaguars linebacker Paul Posluszny is probably the most polite player in the locker room, but even he had a slight dig at the Steelers about their Patriots comments over the past week.
“To me, that’s just noise,” he said. “When guys do that, I almost look at it in the opposite way. When guys feel a need to do stuff like that, you almost question how secure they really are. To me, none of that matters. It’s all us and our approach and how we handle things.”
ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler contributed to this report.