Flash flood, severe thunderstorm warnings in place as heavy rain hits SoCal – ABC7 Los Angeles
The strongest storm of the season is moving out of Southern California on Friday.The heaviest rain slammed into the region Thursday night into early Friday morning, triggering flash floods and mudslides across Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, as well as the Inland Empire.Friday will have scattered showers as the rain moves out of the area, leaving residents to clean up after the storm.Evacuation warnings have been issued for burn scar areas in the Los Angeles area ahead of what’s likely to be the biggest storm of the season.The Los Angeles Fire Department announced that evacuation warnings will take effect at 7 a.m. Thursday through at least 2 p.m. Friday. LAFD has provided a map of the areas affected.Two people were trapped, one seriously injured in an avalanche at Mammoth Mountain Friday morning during mitigation work following the powerful snowstorm.The incident happened around 11:30 a.m. on Lincoln Mountain. According to Mammoth Mountain officials, two patrol staff members were caught in the avalanche.One person was reported to be responsive when extracted from the scene, while the other was transported to Mammoth Hospital with serious injuries.The area was closed to the public at the time the incident unfolded.The entire mountain and lift operations were closed at 12:00 p.m. Friday and are expected to resume Saturday.The region got approximately six feet of snow in the last 36 hours.No further information was immediately available.An Altadena woman who lost her home in the Eaton Fire described the double heartbreak following the devastating fire and now the mudslides.”We’re trying to get a little hope,” she started to say, before her voice broke with emotion.She was near Mendocino Street and Tanoble Drive Friday morning, where walls of mud cleared by emergency crews were piled high along the streets in her neighborhood.She said she lost her home in the Eaton Fire, but she and her family continue to drive by their property every day.”We keep coming back everyday to just get a sense of ‘we still have a home’ when we really don’t,” she told Eyewitness News. “But it feels like you’ve abandoned your child, almost, so we just come back to our house.”She drove by her property on Thursday and witnessed the downpours, so she came back on Friday to survey the damage.She said she plans on rebuilding.”We want to come back. We want to be able to walk these streets and enjoy the sunshine, our palm trees and our neighbors, which we love,” she said.Sierra Madre resident Rob Salinas, who lives right near the mountain, witnessed the torrential downpours and the resulting debris flow with a bird’s eye view.Salinas saw the debris basin below his home started to overflow and said it filled with about 18 feet of debris in about 15 minutes.His camera was rolling as he saw a Jacuzzi being carried away by rushing rain water. “There goes the Jacuzzi,” he says in the recording.”We were watching it, and we saw a wall of water come down, and a little bit more, and then a little bit more, and then it started to rain really hard. I’ve never seen that. We’ve lived here for 37 years and we’ve seen a lot of water come down that canyon, but nothing like that,” Salinas said.Northern California is also feeling the impact of the storm. In Butte County, firefighters saved two dogs trapped in the middle of a river.Cal Fire shared a video of the moment a crew used an inflatable dinghy to rescue the dogs on Feather River.The dogs were found trapped on an island, clinging to tree branches sticking out of the water.The dogs were cooperative as firefighters lifted them from the current and into the dinghy.
