La Conchita

On January 10, 2005 a mudslide occurred in the town of La Conchita a few miles north of Ventura. The natural disaster took 10 lives, destroyed 15 homes and damaged over a dozen. It had rained over 4 inches early in the morning and wanting to take some weather pictures, we were listening to police scanners. We heard that a mudslide took place. My classmates Matt, Rich, Ryan and myself grabbed our cameras and jumped in the car. Matt had press plates, so we were able to get on the closed freeway. It was surreal with no other cars on the 101. There were a couple of police cars heading north and a fire engine that spun out because of the slick roads. Once we arrived and saw how big of a natural disaster took place, we slowly walked into the damaged neighborhoods and documented what was going on around us.