2 dead as powerful storm hits Southern California
Some neighborhoods are subject to precautionary evacuation requests
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, killed a motorist in a submerged car and disrupted hundreds of flights at airports.
With the storm feeding on 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 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 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.
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.
About two dozen vehicles, including big-rigs and a school bus, were either mired in mud or unable to turn around on the closed road and some were abandoned, Sherwin said.