Santa Barbara-based nonprofit ShelterBox responds with relief efforts after 7.8 earthquake

By CALEB BEEGHLY NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT

Santa Barbara-based ShelterBox USA is helping with relief efforts after Monday’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake near Gaziantep, Turkey.

The earthquake and its aftershocks have impacted Turkey and Syria, which led to the response from ShelterBox, which provides shelters and other humanitarian relief for regions in crisis.

According to Kerri Murray, president of ShelterBox USA, the hardest part about this humanitarian crisis is that “So many people are already displaced … The region is already home to millions of refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) from the decade-long civil war in Syria. For many of the Syrian survivors of the earthquake, this is just the latest in a series of unthinkable tragedies. It is a true crisis within a crisis. ”

The civil war in Syria has killed 75,000 people and displaced tens of thousands. Before the earthquakes, around 4.1 million people in northwest Syria already relied on humanitarian aid. In addition to this, Turkey has had seven earthquakes over a magnitude of 7.0 in the last 25 years. However, due these strings of crises, ShelterBox USA has

Last week the Santa Barbara City Council voted to terminate the state of emergency prompted by the huge rainstorm that dumped 5 inches of water on Santa Barbara in two days, flooding the streets and clogging them with debris.

On Tuesday, the council focused on the flip side of the heavy rainfall: The city’s available water supplies are now sufficient to meet demands for at least the next three years.

Council members heard this from city water officials who provided a water supply update that showed just how big a dent the massive January storm made in the state’s drought status, improving it from”extreme” to “abnormally dry.”

“It’s much, much better than it was three weeks ago,” Joshua Haggmark, the city’s water resources manager, said.

“We went from a very dry state to a much improved, wetter state,” added Dakota Corey, the city’s new water supply and services manager.

The city-owned and operated Gibraltar Reservoir, which ended Water Year 2022 at a below average 68% full, now stands at 272% above average, she said.

“It’s full and began spilling over on Jan. 5.”

The Cachuma Reservoir, for all intents and purposes, is full to the point of potentially spilling over, Ms. Corey said.

“Anytime it’s spilling, we get free water because that’s not deducted from our Cachuma allocation,” she said.

Just last year, the city was only allowed to use 5% of its maximum allocation of 3,300 acre feet, but now that figure has jumped to 30%, or 990 acre feet, she said.

At the same time, because of the rain, the city now can rely more on its Gibraltar Reservoir and other water resources to meet its needs instead of relying so much on Lake Cachuma like it did last year.

This means the city of Santa Barbara will be able to “bank” the extra water it doesn’t need from Lake Cachuma for later use if necessary.

In fact, the city now has so much “banked” water on hand in the San Luis Reservoir that it’s been able to pay back all its “water debt” to the state, and in the future will be able to purchase water outright if necessary instead of having to go back into debt, Ms. Corey said.

“The community is using its water resources very efficiently,” she said. “We have one of the most diverse water supply portfolios in the state. We’re not stuck relying on one.”

Desalinated water continues