Eyewitness Images Tell Disaster Story

By Newsmakers TV

When the Thomas Fire broke out last Dec. 4, Mike Eliason was teaching a community class on disaster preparedness. By the afternoon of Jan. 4, when the deadly scope and devastating scale of the massive Montecito debris flow began coming into focus, Mike had acquired – and recorded – a once-a-lifetime eyewitness understanding of the heroism and human toll that can result from a disaster for which no can prepare.

A Public Information Officer for Santa Barbara County Fire, and a former media news photographer whose work touched local residents for decades, Mike tirelessly spent weeks on the front lines, first of the fire, and then of the killer slides that followed. 

On “Newsmakers TV” this week, he sat down for a one-on-one interview with Jerry and, for more than 30 minutes, narrated the extraordinary stories behind by some of the thousands of powerful, emotional and important images that he captured during eight weeks that changed Santa Barbara forever.