LOS ANGELES (AP) — A powerful Pacific storm blew into Southern and Central California on Friday with wind-driven heavy rains that downed power lines and
electrocuted a man, killed a motorist in a submerged car and disrupted hundreds of flights at airports.
With the
storm feeding on an atmospheric river of moisture stretching far out into the
Pacific, precautionary evacuations of homes in some neighborhoods were
requested due to the potential for mudslides and debris flows.
More than
300 arriving and departing flights were delayed or canceled at Los Angeles
International Airport.
In the
Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles, a falling tree downed power lines and hit a
car. A 55-year-old man was electrocuted and pronounced dead at a hospital,
police and fire officials said.
Winds
gusting to 60 mph or more lashed the area. Heavy rains turned creeks and rivers
into brown torrents and released slews of mud from hillsides burned barren by
wildfires. Several stretches of freeways and highways were closed by flooding.
"It's
crazy," said Robin Johnson, an academic adviser at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. "It's just pouring down rain. The wind is just
going nuts."
Elsewhere in
the county, a 20-mile stretch of State Route 138 in the West Cajon Valley was
closed at the scene of a summer wildfire.
Mud sloshed
over concrete rail barriers and about two dozen vehicles, including big-rigs
and a school bus, were either mired in mud or became unable to turn around on
the closed road and some were abandoned, Sherwin said.
Two people
in a car were rescued and four students on the bus were removed and taken to a
school office, he said.
Another road
in the area was covered with 2 feet of mud.
In LA's Sun
Valley, 10 cars were trapped in swift-moving water on a roadway and eight
people had to be rescued, the Fire Department reported.
Using ropes
and inflatable boats, firefighters rescued seven people and two dogs from the
Sepulveda basin, a recreation and flood-control area along the Los Angeles
River. One person was taken to a hospital with a non-life threatening injury.
The storm
took aim at Southern California but also spread precipitation north into the
San Joaquin Valley and up to San Francisco. It was not expected to bring
significant rain in the far north where damage to spillways of the Lake
Oroville dam forced evacuation of 188,000 people last weekend.
"At one
point the wind was so strong I'm surprised it didn't blow my windows out,"
retiree Phoenix Hocking said in a Facebook message from Carpinteria. "I
now have a pond in my patio. And my dog is starting to grow flippers so he can
go out and do his business."
In the
desert town of Victorville, several cars were washed down a flooded street. A
helicopter rescued one person from the roof of a car but another motorist was
found dead in a submerged vehicle, San Bernardino County fire spokesman Eric
Sherwin said.
The National
Weather Service said it could end up being the strongest storm to hit Southern
California since January 1995.
Rain and
wind wiped out play in golf's Genesis Open at the Riviera Country Club in Los
Angeles, where a eucalyptus tree cracked.
Hundreds of
trees and dozens of power lines had toppled in the Los Angeles area and at one
point more than 60,000 city power customers were without electricity.
A 75-foot
tree fell onto an apartment building near the University of California, Los
Angeles, narrowly missing someone who was in bed, fire officials said. Four of
the six apartments have been declared unsafe to enter, prompting the evacuation
of 16 college students.
"I was
just sitting in bed trying to enjoy a Friday morning of no class," one resident
told KCAL-TV. "I had a giant, like, thunder popping sound and then next
thing I knew a branch was coming through the ceiling."
Her leg was
scratched by debris and "I was covered in sawdust," she said.
Her thought
now was, "Where am I going to live?"
Another tree
smashed a carport and vehicles in the Santa Barbara suburb of Goleta.
Knott's
Berry Farm amusement park in Orange County closed because the weather. High
surf pounded beaches.
By evening,
Ventura County and northern Los Angeles County had seen 24-hour rain totals of
up to 7 ½ inches, with the San Marcos mountain pass in Santa Barbara County
receiving nearly 8 ½ inches.
Farther
south, downtown Los Angeles had received about 1 ½ inches of rain while some
areas saw up to 4 inches.
The storm
system was moving "very slowly" eastward and Los Angeles County was
expected to see more rain through Saturday, said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist
with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
The city of
Duarte, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles,
ordered evacuation of 180 homes below a burn scar. Up the coast, evacuations
were urged for parts of Camarillo Springs in Ventura County and around an
11½-square-mile burn scar west of Santa Barbara.
Santa Anita
Park near Pasadena canceled all its horse races Friday.
In Northern
California, officials monitoring the stricken Oroville Dam on the Feather River
said they were confident the reservoir would handle any runoff from expected
storms because ongoing releases have been lowering the lake's level since its
spillways were damaged last week.
*AP/MSN*
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