It’s raining again, here in Carpinteria, where I live. It’s raining pretty hard. I’m listening to the water drumming down the rain gutters of my building. The dog is sleeping on the floor, behind me. It’s warm and dry in my study. I’m thinking about the people down in La Conchita. Rescuers are still digging for survivors. People who live there are either grieving or worrying.

As you can see, it’s not very far from where I am right now, and the site of this terrible event.

click to enlarge

Yesterday, driving home from Ventura, I looked at the scar on the hillside above La Conchita; the scar left from a landslide 10 years ago. I thought the hillside looked swollen, ominous. I want you to look at this photo of La Conchita.

You won’t see anything like that on CNN. That’s not from the slide that happened today. That’s a USGS photo of the slide that happened in 1995. See that big lump of earth in the middle of that gouge in the bluff? That stuff that looks like it’s sliding? That’s what slid in 95, and it’s been sitting there just that way until today, when it finished going down. There were four or five houses under the bottom of that slide. Now there are about a dozen more. And people.

This is a painful thing for our community. I feel just awful for those involved. La Conchita – the little shell – is such a small, quiet place – just homes and a gas station. They don’t have a supermarket or anything, so I know the people there come into Carpinteria a lot. So I guess I’ve sort of thought of it as a little brother to Carpinteria, as we are to Santa Barbara. I wish there was something I could do.

Here’s a site with lots of photos from La Conchita today. The link to them is in the center column.