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"I'm lucky to be here tonight."
After dramatic rainfall totals led to massive flooding in Santa Barbara and surrounding communities earlier this week, Rob Lowe is recalling the resulting damage to his neighborhood.
While speaking with "Extra" at the premiere of his new film, "Dog Gone," the actor -- who owns a home in Montecito -- revealed he and his neighbors were "trapped" for over a day after the storm had knocked over a massive tree, blocking them in.
"I'm lucky to be here tonight," Lowe said. "We were trapped for a day and a half. Cut off ... there was a big tree down on my road and nobody could get in or out."
The "9-1-1: Lone Star" actor went on to explain how he was able to get everyone out.
"I just got a winch on my truck, so it was perfect," Lowe said. "I got to break it in and it worked."
Earlier this week, "The West Wing" star posted a TikTok video in which he captured how he was able to pull the tree out from the road by using his truck.
In the clip, below, Lowe showed footage of how the giant tree was blocking the entire roadway. "We gotta try and get this tree out of the road," he told the camera.
The "Parks and Recreation" star can then be seen attaching a cable from the front of his car to the tree, before he returned to his car and backed up slowly. Lowe was successful and was able to clear a path in the road.
"Victory is ours," he said, while the truck drives through the street.
Lowe later posted the TikTok on his Instagram Stories. Alongside the clip, he joked, "@911LoneStar has taught me a few things," adding a wink-eyed emoji.
Due to the storm, nearly 10,000 residents of Montecito, California and neighboring communities in southern Santa Barbara county were under a mandatory evacuation on Monday.
A tweet Monday afternoon from the National Weather Service in Los Angeles warned of "DANGEROUS LIFE THREATENING FLASH FLOODING ... through this evening as additional rain moves into the area."
According to the National Weather Service, per KTLA, Montecito reported over seven inches of rain within only 12 hours on Monday. Meanwhile, Santa Barbara was hit with five inches of rain.
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In addition to Lowe, many A-list celebrities live in Montecito, including Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and Ellen DeGeneres, who shared a video on Monday that captured some of the flooding in her own backyard.
In her video, the former talk show host notes that this latest weather assault came five years to the day from the tragic flash flooding and landslides of 2018 -- exacerbated by the ravaging of the Santa Ynez Mountains by the Thomas Fire of 2017. 23 people died in that natural disaster.
Overlooking flood waters in a creek bed that runs through her property, DeGeneres said, "This is the five year anniversary from the fire and mudslides that killed so many people — people lost their homes, their lives. This is crazy, on the five year anniversary, we’re having unprecedented rain."
Showing the raging waters behind her, DeGeneres said that the stream next to her home "never flows, ever." Now, though, she said that it's "probably about nine feet up," and she's anticipating another two feet of rising.
"We need to be nicer to mother nature, because mother nature is not happy with us," DeGeneres added.
