Two dead as storms lash California
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 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.
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.
The National Weather Service said it could end up being the strongest storm to hit Southern California since January 1995.
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.