Mud covers highways, strands drivers in Southern California
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rescuers threw ladders and tarps across mud up to 6 feet deep to help hundreds of trapped people from cars that got caught in a roiling river of mud along a major Southern California trucking route, a California Highway Patrol official said Friday in what he and other witnesses described as a chaotic scene.
The people rescued from State Route 58, about 30 miles east of Bakersfield, were stranded in a powerful storm on Thursday evening.
The storms unleashed flash flood and debris flows along the 58, the Interstate 5 and in two small mountainside communities, where at least a dozen homes were reported damaged.
The affected section of Interstate 5, one of the state's major north-south arteries, carries traffic among steep mountains over a pass rising to an elevation of more than 4,100 feet between the Central Valley and metropolitan Los Angeles.
Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Keith Mora said the agency 14 people and eight animals in the Lake Hughes area, some from atop cars.
At least a dozen homes in the area were damaged by the mud flows, said Kerjon Lee, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.
National Weather Service meteorologist Robbie Munroe said it's too early to say whether Thursday's storm was connected to the El Nino phenomenon that experts say has formed in the Pacific Ocean.
The National Weather Service said a flash flood watch would be in effect again Friday afternoon and early evening for the mountains and deserts because of the continuing threat of severe and slow-moving thunderstorms.