Southern Calif. faces more rain, power outages
Officials: 3 deaths caused byextreme conditions
Swaths of Southern California remained under flood warnings Tuesday as more rain was forecast and more than 150,000 people still had no power.
Officials have attributed three deaths to the storm. In Yuba City, 40 miles north of Sacramento, a man was killed when a redwood tree toppled on him in high winds, police said. Two other men were killed by fallen trees Sunday in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, and Boulder Creek in Santa Cruz County.
The 11.87 inches that fell in a 24-hour span on Monday was a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event, according to the weather station at the University of California, Los Angeles.
AccuWeather estimated that the state’s preliminary total damage and economic loss will be between $9 billion and $11 billion.
The historic storm was expected to drop up to 3 more inches of rain on Los Angeles and San Diego on Tuesday as a powerful atmospheric river continued to bring heavy rain, mudslides and flooding. Rainfall was more intense in areas with higher terrain, according to the National Weather Service.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued a local state of emergency Monday as the storm pounded Los Angeles with rain and heavy winds, damaging multimillion-dollar homes across the city and sending workers at homeless shelters scrambling for more beds. Sixteen people were evacuated and several homes near the Hollywood Hills were redtagged.
The Los Angeles Fire Department said 1,000 firefighters dealt with more than 300 mudslides and more than 100 reports of flooding and rescues of motorists stranded in vehicles on inundated roadways.
A debris flow caused significant damage to about five homes in Beverly Hills on Monday, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Although no one was trapped, about 10 people were displaced.
The intensity of the rain was expected to slightly dwindle from what occurred over the weekend as the storm system headed east into the desert, forecasters said.
Contributing: The Associated Press; John Bacon, Thao Nguyen, Doyle Rice and Kayla Jimenez, USA TODAY; Caralin Nunes, Arizona Republic; Chris Damien, Palm Springs Desert Sun.