Beloved television personality Ellen DeGeneres responded to severe flooding hitting Santa Barbara to call for climate-change action in a video she shared online.
Standing alongside a roaring creek behind her Montecito home — the area located between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean is home to a number of notable celebrities, like Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle — DeGeneres shared the video in a tweet while pointing out that the area was under mandatory evacuation orders.
“Montecito is under mandatory evacuation. We are on higher ground so they asked us to shelter in place. Please stay safe everyone,” she tweeted.
“This is the 5 year anniversary from the fire and mudslides that killed so many people and — people lost their homes, their lives,” DeGeneres said in the video. “This is crazy — on the 5 year anniversary, we’re having unprecedented rain. This stream next to our house never flows, ever. It’s probably about 9 ft. up.”
“We need to be nicer to mother nature, because mother nature is not happy with us … and those who are apart, stay safe everybody,” she added.
Montecito is under mandatory evacuation. We are on higher ground so they asked us to shelter in place. Please stay safe everyone. pic.twitter.com/7dv5wfNSzG
— Ellen DeGeneres (@EllenDeGeneres) January 9, 2023
California is reeling from a steady string of deadly storms with tens of thousands of people losing power — the death toll is now at 14, according to the Associated Press.
“Streets and highways transformed into gushing rivers, trees toppled, mud slid and motorists growled as they hit roadblocks caused by fallen debris,” the news agency reported. “The death toll from the relentless string of storms climbed from 12 to 14 on Monday, after two people were killed by falling trees, state officials said.”
Montecito 93108 California. Monday 9 January 2023 @ 13.00. Reminder.. Don’t buy a house in a flooded area.. pic.twitter.com/MdXVkJ4y8r
— Olivier Leclercq 🇫🇷🪂🛩️🇺🇸 (@olivarius8208) January 9, 2023
On Monday, a five-year-old boy was swept away by floodwaters after the truck his mother was driving became stranded in the floodwaters. A seven-hour search was reportedly called off when it became too dangerous for divers to continue searching for the child.
The Hollywood Reporter offered a quick history on what took place in the region five years ago:
“Five years ago, on Jan. 9, 2018, Montecito was ravaged by mudslides caused by flash flooding; in the middle of the night, the town got more than half an inch of rainfall in five minutes, and the storm continued throughout the day, leaving lives claimed, homes flattened, gas mains popped, and power lines down. At the time, these mudslides were made more severe by the Thomas Fire that started in the area on Dec. 4, 2017 — the charred Santa Ynez Mountains were made more vulnerable to destruction because the earth wasn’t prepared to absorb water well.”
Climate alarmists were quick to suggest that society can alter the course of Mother Nature by reducing emissions to zero.
“I also hope this is a wake up call. The climate emergency is coming for all of us. We need to race to zero emissions and ecosystem restoration like our lives depended on it…cause they do,” one such zealot said in a tweet.
I hope everyone is California stays safe over the next few days.
I also hope this is a wake up call. The climate emergency is coming for all of us.
We need to race to zero emissions and ecosystem restoration like our lives depended on it…cause they do. https://t.co/IVtUygV9ir
— Margaret Klein Salamon, PhD (@ClimatePsych) January 10, 2023
Other social media users weighed in to note that the storms may not be as “unprecedented” as DeGeneres believes:
I hope all are safe!
But note: Not “unprecedented”. Montecito has a long history of devastating floods dating long before the last one in 2018.
Including : January 25, 1969https://t.co/KYM6TJavJX pic.twitter.com/WlTAXtknxo
— Don Penim (@Don_Penim) January 10, 2023
There was also this exchange:
This isn’t climate change. It’s weather. Every so many years Calif has a winter like this. Then we have drought. It has always been that way.
— Bev (@BevH111) January 10, 2023
Republished with permission from American Wire News Service
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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