California Braces for Mudslides Amid Rain After Wildfires (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Turning now to the ongoing natural disaster in California. After weeks of those catastrophic fires, well now rain is bringing the threat of mudslides. ABC's Melissa Dawn is in Malibu with the latest on that. Good morning Melissa, so much concern there.

Speaker 2: Yesterday, good morning. Well, it is a welcome relief, right? The rain, it does bring a lot of concerns. Look, at this point, our Santa Ana wins. Those red flag warnings, that is now gone. But the concern for mudslides is because you see right here behind us, these hillsides. This is along Pacific Coast Highway here in Malibu. Officials worry just any bit of rain that could fall onto these areas could really trigger these mudslides, which could be detrimental to so many communities and areas that are in the burn scars across Southern California. Now, these areas are under a flood watch and we are seeing crews working to basically remove vegetation. We've seen them also shoring up some of those hillsides, adding definitely some other barriers to protect different communities. Also filling up thousands of sandbags ahead of the rain. And it's critical, because look, LA, we haven't had significant rainfall for months. And it's something that LA officials say they're trying to prevent mudflows, even those debris flows, which could also bring so much of that toxic ash runoff that we've been seeing from these destroyed structures. There's thousands of them that could really bring so much of that dangerous runoff into other communities, even down to the beach and even to the ocean. So of course, while all of this rain is welcome sight, especially for the firefight and to contain all these blazes that we've been fighting, that increased humidity will also help. But of course, that threat remains for possible mudslides. And of course, this area now under flood watches.