Dec. 25 (UPI) — Two have died as stormy weather enveloped Southern California on Wednesday and is expected to continue through Friday, causing a state of emergency and local evacuations.
Torrential rains flooded highways and created debris fields and lots of mud in Southern California spurred Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency.
The state of emergency applies to Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Shasta counties, NBC News reported.
An elderly San Diego man named Roberto Ruiz died on Wednesday after a tree branch fell on him and caused him to suffer a cardiac arrest.
He had gone outside to try to move his car, his daughter-in-law, Zenaida Rodriguez, said.
“This is a father, a grandpa,” she told NBC News, adding that she has a 2-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter.
“How do you go home on Christmas Eve and tell your kids that their grandpa’s dead?” she pondered.
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Deputy James Carvallo also died when his vehicle crashed in a weather-related accident while he was driving to work.
More rain is expected through Friday and is disrupting Christmas Day celebrations from San Bernardino County to the east to Southern California’s coastal counties.
The relatively isolated mountain community of Wrightwood is subject to shelter-in-place and evacuation orders that the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said are still in place as of 9 a.m. PST.
“Do not drive around the community, as you slow emergency services from completing assessments,” SBCSD Capt. Ken Lutz said, as reported by KTLA.
About 120 first responders are assisting local residents with evacuations and other services as needed, officials said.
Wrightwood is located about 50 miles northwest of San Bernardino, but the drive through mountain roads is closer to 70 miles, and the only through road, Highway 2, was closed on Wednesday after a mudslide buried part of it.
Local resident Kaitlyn Johnson told KABC that the storm initially was “nothing too alarming,’ with just a little street flooding on Wednesday.
“But by the hour, it got very alarming, very fast,” Johnson said, adding that the amount of water flowing past her home tripled in size during the day.
The floodwaters eventually breached her yard and then her home, but Johnson and her family are safe.
“I definitely think we got lucky, for sure, because some of our neighbors are in a very tough spot right now,” she said.
Local first responders went door-to-door on Wednesday to check on residents and encourage those in danger zones to evacuate their homes.
With more torrential rain forecast through Friday, the orders might stay in effect for Wrightwood, where about 5,000 people call home, until the storm system dissipates on Saturday.
Between 6 and 12 inches of rain fell on parts of Southern California on Wednesday and into Thursday, with about the same amount predicted through Friday.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.