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Why fire-scorched California is now readying for mudslides

Search and rescue team in a neighborhood destroyed by the mudslides in Santa Barbara County in January.

Long-awaited rain is pummeling California, threatening dangerous mudslides in areas reeling from recent fires. Officials are currently warning people to evacuate parts of southern California where the Holy Fire burned more than 23,000 acres this summer. Further north, in burn scars where the deadly Camp Fire recently raged, the National Weather Service has issued flash flood warnings, too. Paradise, a town that was devastated by the Camp Fire, remains under mandatory evacuation orders as the rains pour down.

It’s a familiar sequence of disasters for Californians: after the record-setting fire season of 2017, waist-high mud flowed through Santa Barbara County at more than 35 miles per hourkilling at least 17 people in January. And...

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