La Conchita, California is a tiny beach community north of LA, subject, like many places along the coast, to massive debris flows from a ridge above the narrow town site.On January 10, 2005 a devastating mudslide took ten lives and left a huge mass of fallen mountain. Geologic and atmospheric conditions  are locally very dyanmic and unstable, while the population and transportation pressures on the land remain intense.  The townsite occupies a narrow strip of coastal littoral consisting of narrow beach, highway 1/101 which is the main coastal artery north from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, and the Union Pacific railbeds, also used by Amtrak.    Marine temperatures, first noticed to be in a rising trend in the seventies , continue to rise as a consequence of global warming.  The facing rincon, or slope, above the town's narrow strip of land, is laced with internal springs. Flow may come from irrigation of avocado orchards on the crest of the rincon. Debris flow mobilizes at regular intervals according to a century of recorded observations,  dramatically changing the topography of ravines and slope from year to year.  A 1995 debris flow onto La Conchita, non fatal in this instance, is thought to only have released 10 percent of its potential mass, and that possibly, the 2005 and future flows are sequelae to 1995.