One dead, others stranded as storm lashes California

LOS ANGELES 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, stranded others in flooded areas 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 neighbourhoods were requested due to the potential for mudslides and debris flows.

More than 300 arriving and departing flights were delayed or cancelled at Los Angeles International Airport.

In the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles, a falling tree downed power lines and hit a car. A 55year-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.”

“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 San Bernardino 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, county fire spokesman Eric Sherwin said.