Strained Delta levees Watched as Storms Ease

Storms that claimed at least seven lives in Northern California eased off Wednesday and the forecast was for some sunny weather ahead, but levees along the Sacramento River Delta--threatened by a collapsed dam--were straining to contain rivers swollen by a week of torrential rains.

In Yuba City and Marysville, authorities considered evacuating all nonambulatory patients from hospitals as the Feather River was only six inches from topping its levees.

Despite the threat in Sacramento County, a state Office of Emergency Services spokesman said Wednesday afternoon that the levee system containing the nearly full Sacramento and American rivers was “holding up just fine.”

Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Bill Prout said the next 24 hours would be “quite critical.” He said the levees in the delta were built “a long time ago” and in some cases, the materials would not meet modern standards.

But Devere Davis of the state Flood Control Center said, “We don’t have any levees that have failed. We have some that we’re watching very closely. The water is higher than we’ve ever seen before in the American River.”

National Weather Service forecasters predicted some rain in the north for the next several days, but they did not expect anything like the storms that dumped upward of 18 inches of rain on parts of Napa and Sonoma counties last weekend.

In fact, the weather service said in a special statement Wednesday afternoon: “There are signs in the heavens and on the weather charts that the deluge is coming to an end for soggy Northern and Central California.”

Satellite pictures, the forecasters said, were showing “a relatively cloud-free stretch of ocean to the west.”

And, they added, a bulge of high pressure was beginning to develop offshore, which should shield the area from advancing storm systems.

Although light morning rain sprinkled many parts of Orange County Wednesday, there was little evidence of the weekend’s wild storms. Lifeguards and Harbor Patrol officers at Huntington Beach and Newport Beach reported no major weather-related problems.

In Huntington Beach, the surf was “stormy” but didn’t hinder surfers, Claude Panis, a lifeguard spokesman said. With the exception of very light sprinkles in the early morning hours, the only sign of storms past and future were beach debris and late afternoon clouds, he added.

In Santa Ana, where it was mostly cloudy Wednesday, the 24-hour low was 52 degrees, the high 67 degrees and .15 of an inch of rain fell in the period ending at 3:30 p.m.

And in Newport Beach, an Orange County Harbor Patrol spokesman said: “It’s real nice. The National Weather Service is calling for small craft advisories, but the skies are clear. We haven’t really had any problems in the last couple of days.” In the 24-hour period ending at 3:30 p.m., the low was 57, the high 64 and .18 of an inch of rain fell.

The weather picture in the rest of Southern California also began to brighten with the apparent fading of chances that yet another front would bring more heavy rain Wednesday night and this morning. Although National Weather Service forecasters at midday Wednesday were predicting .25 to .50 of inch of rain in coastal sections from the new front, they revised that by early afternoon to call for merely cloudy skies and “a chance of rain” this morning.

It should be partly cloudy through Friday with highs in the 60s, forecasters said. And the weekend should be partly cloudy with humid and temperatures in the 60s and 70s, slightly above normal.

Although things were looking up all through the state, Gov. George Deukmejian on Wednesday proclaimed that states of emergency existed in nine more Northern California counties because of the prolonged rainstorms that turned streams into rampaging rivers and hillsides into oozing death traps.

The counties added to the list so that the state can apply for such federal aid as low-interest loans and temporary housing were Glenn, Lake, Marin, Modoc, Sacramento, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Yuba.

On Tuesday, the governor had proclaimed emergency states in Humboldt, Napa and Sonoma Counties.

Deukmejian visited the evacuation center in Santa Rosa, where he was briefed on how the state and local agencies were responding to the problems and the needs of evacuees. He flew over much of the flood-stricken area.

Damage estimates mounted throughout Northern California. While the main freeway reopened between the Sierras, Sacramento and San Francisco, Interstate 5 south of Sacramento was shut because of flooding on the Mukelumn River.

North of San Francisco, in hard-hit Sonoma, squadrons of Air National Guard troop-carrying and rescue helicopters plucked another 300 people from a sodden, battered mountain. After landing on dry ground, the evacuees were taken in school and city buses to an evacuation center in downtown Sonoma.

Unlike evacuees taken out as late as Tuesday, most of the latest wave of weather refugees appeared spent and shaken. National Guard crew members said many people who had declined rescue two or three days ago gladly took flight Wednesday. Crew members said a lack of food and water, unending rains and--for the first time--lengthy power outages had taken their toll.

The state Office of Emergency Operations reported 8,376 people remained evacuated in Northern California, and nearly 2,000 homes and businesses had been damaged or destroyed since the storms began a week ago.

OES spokesman David Zocchetti also reported 41 injuries and nine storm-related deaths, including two drownings in Sonoma County, and one death each in Contra Costa, Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara counties, although Santa Clara County officials did not confirm any storm deaths.

OES also said there were four deaths reported in Napa County, although Napa officials confirmed only two. Another death had been reported in San Mateo County, where a man was struck by a piece of machinery that was moved by a gust of wind.

On the Sacramento River Delta, crews worked to shore up levees. Several hundred people who lived in new housing tracts behind the levees were forced to flee Wednesday when levees began giving way, authorities said.

Among the enclaves threatened or evacuated were Hood, Walnut Grove and Thornton, all southwest of Sacramento.

Authorities were paying particular attention to Folsom Dam, a major flood control structure on the American River, which flows through Sacramento and into the Sacramento River in the Delta.

Folsom Reservoir surpassed its capacity early in the week, in part because a temporary earthen dam above Auburn failed on Tuesday, while two smaller dams farther upstream were releasing large amounts of water to avoid overflowing.

“There is just a straight flow down the north fork of the American River into Folsom Lake,” said Gerald Carroll, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation.

Of all the dams in California’s intricate flood control system, Folsom Dam “without a doubt ... is the critical one,” Carroll said.

“We’ve never been in this situation before. ... We are releasing more water into the American River than we ever have,” Carroll said, adding this is “the first time that the levees (downstream) were being subjected to this much water.”

In an effort to draw down the Folsom reservoir, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released more water than ever before in the dam’s 30 years of operation, prompting flood control officials to closely monitor levees downriver in Sacramento and along the delta.

To prevent the dam from overflowing in an uncontrolled release, workers took the extraordinary step of completely raising the dam’s floodgates, a move that increased the reservoir’s capacity, but also meant that 130,000 cubic feet--or 910,000 gallons--per second of water was flowing out of the dam.

“It is creating a stress on the dam, but it is built to hold it,” Carroll said. “There are no signs of any cracking, seeping or leakage beyond what is normal.”

Although state, local and federal officials said there had not been major breaks on any levee downstream, Carroll did note: “We don’t know what is going to happen.”

“Any time you do something never before done on the levees with a town the size of Sacramento you’re nervous. ... You don’t know what happens to a levy in 20 years. But these levies were built really well,” Carroll said.

In Sacramento, the American River had another five feet to climb before levees would be topped.

“This is a historical thing for them. They think the levees can hold, especially since weather is holding,” said Zocchetti, of the state Office of Emergency Services.

Southern California’s sunny respite began following an early morning drenching that measured 1.08 inch at the Los Angeles Civic Center, bringing the season’s total to a respectable 12.13 inches.

That rain, which began between 3 and 4 a.m., was tapering off by midmorning and it wasn’t long before the basin was basking in pale sunlight. Wednesday’s Los Angeles Civic Center high was 68 degrees after an overnight low of 60.

The Wednesday morning front did not produce many new problems, other than to snarl some traffic, clog the freeways and set off some rockslides that closed Malibu Canyon Road for a time. Pacific Coast Highway and Topanga Canyon Boulevard remained open, though, as highway crews kept grading equipment busy.

Los Angeles International Airport reported flight delays up to 40 minutes with flights taking off eastward rather than westward over the ocean because of rain and decreased visibility.

Dan Morain reported from San Francisco; Jack Jones from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Ruth Snyder in San Francisco and Kenneth Bunting and Richard C. Paddock in Sacramento, also contributed to this article.