let's speak to thomas tighe a resident of montecito let's speak to thomas tighe, a resident of montecitoitnessed the tragedy first hand, and he is also ceo of direct relief, an organisation based in california, which helps disaster victims. when did you first realise something was seriously wrong? hello, mike. as the events unfolded i was awake all night checking on the rainfall out of concern the debris flow might occur, which we had been warned about, but once you hear this ominous rumbling and i looked up around 3:30am and saw the two cars that were parked in the street had floated away and there were some more vehicles floating down our little residential street it was too late to do anything because the water was rushing so strongly and thenit water was rushing so strongly and then it was just a matter of waiting on the family and getting to the highs ground possible, and trying to do whatever we could to stay out of harm's way. it was a small neighbourhood. the baby that was covered was oddly a friend of mine, i'm probably 1000 yards from where i am. we were on his roof. it was a t