California mops up after waves of deadly storms
Repairing damage could top $1 billion, disaster expert says
LOS ANGELES — Storm-ravaged California scrambled to clean up and repair widespread damage Wednesday as the lashing rain eased in many areas, although thunderstorms led a new atmospheric river into the northern half of the state.
The plume of moisture lurking off the coast stretched all the way over the Pacific to Hawaii, making it a “true Pineapple Express,” the National Weather Service said.
The latest rains were expected to affect only impact Northern California, giving the southern part of the state a break until more wet weather arrives by the weekend.
At least 17 people have died in the storms battering the state. The figure is likely to rise, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday during a visit to the scenic town of Capitola on the Santa Cruz coast, which was pounded with high surf and flooding last week.
A 43-year-old woman who called 911 and said her car was stuck in floodwaters Tuesday was found Wednesday inside the submerged vehicle north of San Francisco, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. Divers found her car under about 10 feet of water off a rural road near Forestville, the department said.
To the south in the central part of the state, a pickup driver and a motorcyclist were killed Tuesday in the San Joaquin Valley when a tree that had been struck by lightning fell on them, authorities said.
More than half of California’s 58 counties were declared disaster areas, Newsom said.
The previous storm that began Monday was one in a series that began late last month, and repairing the damage may cost more than $1 billion, said Adam Smith, a disaster expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Crews worked to reopen major highways that were closed by rock slides, swamped by flooding or smothered with mud, while more than 10,000 people who were ordered out of seaside towns on the central coast were allowed to return home.
That included Montecito, a Santa Barbara County community where 23 people died and more than 100 homes were destroyed in a mudslide five years ago.
Yet thousands of people living near rain-swollen creeks and rivers remained under evacuation orders.
In the San Joaquin Valley, raging waters from Bear Creek flooded parts of the city of Merced and neighboring Planada, a small agricultural community along a highway leading to Yosemite National Park.
All 4,000 residents of Planada were ordered to leave Tuesday. Neighborhoods were under water with cars submerged up to their roofs. Residents ordered to evacuate carried whatever they could salvage on their backs as they left in the rain.
Other evacuations were ordered because of levee breaches in parts of Monterey County.
Despite the rain, most of the state remained in extreme or severe drought, according to the U.S.
Drought Monitor.
The storms may help locally “but will not resolve the long-term drought challenges,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad.
Damage from the storm included washed-out roads and seaside businesses flooded by 20-foot surf that hit Santa Cruz County.
A line of thunderstorms moving into the Sierra foothills produced a tornado with winds up to 90 mph that tore up trees for about a half-mile before dawn Tuesday in rural Calaveras County, 85 miles east of San Francisco.
A few minutes earlier, gusts estimated at 75 mph
lifted a large horse barn over a fence, damaged trees and other barn roofs, the Sacramento National Weather Service office said.
Many areas saw unprecedented amounts of rain coupled with lightning, hail and furious winds that knocked down trees and damaged electrical lines.
More than 54,000 homes and businesses around the state were without power Wednesday, according to the website Poweroutage.us.
Mudslides damaged some homes in the Los Angeles hillside areas, while further up the coast a sinkhole damaged 15 homes in the rural Santa Barbara County
community of Orcutt.
In San Francisco, a tree fell on a commuter bus Tuesday without causing injuries and lightning struck the city’s iconic Transamerica Pyramid building. High winds also ripped away part of the roof on a large apartment building.
Some people found themselves stranded in small communities inundated with water and mud.
“We’re all stuck out here,” homeowner Brian Briggs said, describing a scary night during which the deluge unleashed mudslides in remote Matilija Canyon that buried one house and cut off the only road to nearby Ojai.