The National Weather Service reports staggering rainfall amounts in California, including more than 9.4 inches over 48 hours at one location in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. A series of winter storms has all but eliminated drought-level dryness in California this winter.
The service said earlier Thursday more than 4 inches fell over 48 hours near a wildfire burn scar close to the city of Lake Elsinore in the Santa Ana Mountains. Hillside neighborhoods are under evacuation orders because of the high risk of mudslides.
To the north, downtown San Francisco received more than 1.75 inches of rain over 24 hours. Across San Francisco Bay, a woman escaped serious injury when her hillside home was swept away during a mudslide.
It was just before 3 a.m. when a 200 foot hillside collapsed just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. A fast moving mud flow tore trees, before leveling the home where 70-year-old Susan Gordon lay in rubble up to her neck, CBS News’ Mola Lenghi reports. “I could hear her calling for help,” said Rosaleen Bolger. “She was trapped. The cops showed up and he coached her, just to keep calm.”
“We are so grateful the woman is OK and we want to thank the Fire Department for saving this woman from what could have been a terrible tragedy,” the sheriff’s office said.
Bolger also lives in the fragile hillside town of trendy Sausalito.
“What it sounded like was a bulldozer going down the street. It was very loud. Very loud,” said Bolger.
A pile of debris is what’s left of the home that came sliding down in this mudslide. It took rescuers nearly an hour to get the Gordon out, while nearby others were in distress too.
Meanwhile, the California Highway Patrol in Marin County has been warning of a potential flooding situation in Novato where a levee along State Route 37 between Highway 101 and Atherton Avenue has breached.
Authorities said they were not closing State Route 37 yet, but noted that if the water in the field begins to flood the road, they might need to shut it down between 101 and Atherton Avenue, CBS San Francisco reports.
Earlier Thursday, thousands of customers have were reported to have been without power in Northern California after the second of two heavy storms hit the area, toppling trees and downing power lines.
More than 30,000 were without electricity in Shasta County, where some communities received more than a foot of snow in the last 24 hours.
Paul Moreno, a spokesman with Pacific Gas & Pacific Gas, said 28,000 of their customers remain without power in Shasta County. Another 6,000 customers of Redding Electric Utility have been without power since Wednesday morning.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, at least 41,000 lost power Thursday.
PG&E spokeswoman Karly Hernandez told the San Francisco Chronicle the largest amount of outages were in the North Bay with nearly 17,000 customers without power.
