Wild Northern California storm soaks parched state but knocks out power, delays flights
Posted December 11, 2014 11:31 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SAN FRANCISCO – Strong gales and sheets of rain that knocked out electricity, flooded freeways and toppled trees in Northern California churned Thursday to a slide-prone Southern California bracing for its own beating.
Los Angeles should expect rain by the end of the day. Already, one apartment complex in a spot prone to mudslides in Riverside was evacuated. In the San Bernardino National Forest, lumber workers were loading concrete weights onto the stacks to keep them from blowing away, and piling sandbags in front of their shop doors to stave off floodwater.
The San Bernardino Mountains have been razed by wildfires and were already doused by a storm last week, making them particularly vulnerable to mud flows.
The Port of Los Angeles is ready to take on the storm, spokesman Phillip Sanfield said. “If heavy rains come, we’ve got construction crews to check on the docks; police can deal with flooding streets,” he said.
Throughout the San Francisco Bay Area Thursday, waves slammed onto waterfronts, ferries were bound to their docks, some airplanes were grounded and many schools cancelled classes.
Gusting winds had motorists tightly gripping their steering wheels on the Golden Gate Bridge, where managers created a buffer zone to prevent head-on collisions by swerving cars.
The iconic suspension bridge is engineered to swing in cross winds, and engineers were standing by, but “the concern we have right now is more about vehicles,” spokeswoman Priya David Clemens said.
An elementary school student was trapped for about 15 minutes when an 80-foot (24-meter) tree fell on him in Santa Cruz. Rescuers with chain saws freed his arm and he was taken to a hospital in good condition.
Close to a quarter-million customers lost power in Northern California.
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Mendoza reported from Santa Cruz, California. Associated Press Writers Kristin J. Bender and Ellen Knickmeyer in San Francisco; Lisa Leff in Berkeley; John Antczak in Los Angeles; Scott Smith in Fresno; Alina Hartounian in Phoenix; and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed.
