19,000 Flee as Levee Gives Way : 2 Towns Imperiled as Yuba River Dike Fails, Refugees Jam Roads

The swollen Yuba River broke through a levee north of the state capital Thursday evening, forcing the evacuation of more than 19,000 people from two farming towns and causing a massive southbound traffic jam of refugees.

Residents of Linda and Olivehurst, just south of Marysville, were ordered out after water poured through the 40-foot-wide break into a shopping center and then spread up to eight feet deep toward a residential area of Linda, a community of about 10,000.

The levee break came as a surprise, said Bill Helms, state flood control coordinator in Sacramento. He said the Yuba River was carrying about 53,000 cubic feet of water per second when the 40-foot gap opened near the Caltrans building at Linda, flooding a “substantial” area.

The surprising part, Helms said, was that the river had already reached its flood stage and was receding.

Tom Jensen, a news broadcaster at KUBA radio in Yuba City, said, “It’s fairly surprising that no one has been injured and, so far, no homes have been damaged.”

Precautionary Move

Yuba County Civil Defense officials said the evacuation of Olivehurst, to the southeast, was precautionary.

Some people were plucked from the roof of the Peach Tree Mall in Linda and airlifted to three American Red Cross shelters in Sutter. Five more shelters were set up in Yuba City, and other evacuees were taken to Beale Air Force Base, about 10 miles to the east, as well as to a high school in Wheatland. There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

Six National Guard helicopters were being used in addition to two from state agencies, authorities said. Cars, buses and boats also were thrown into the evacuation effort.

California 70 and 99 were closed between the endangered area and Sacramento to enable thousands to flee by automobile. There were massive traffic jams, the California Highway Patrol said.

The highways were closed at E Street in Marysville and about 30 miles south at the junction of Interstate 5 with California 99, just north of Sacramento.

The National Weather Service said the affected areas would include “all of southern Yuba County south of Marysville.”

The state Office of Emergency Services, however, said there were no immediate problems for Yuba City or Marysville.

Paul Moore, a radio station manager who was at the Peach Tree Mall when the levee gave way, said, “People ran through the mall yelling, ‘We had a break!’ By the time I got out of there, water was lapping at the doors and cars were half submerged in the parking lot.”

Firefighters from Yuba County and as far away as Sacramento worked frantically into the night to repair the break in the earthen levee. A California Conservation Corps crew was also sent to the scene.

“They started to close the gap,” Jensen said, “but they were unsuccessful. They’re still working at it.”

Officials from the state Department of Water Resources, other water agencies and firefighters were conferring to decide how to try to stop the flow.

That and other levee breaks occurred Thursday along the overtaxed waterways of the vast Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, despite declarations that the heavy storms battering California for more than a week were over. Overtaxed waterways, not new rainfall was the problem Thursday.

Heart Attack

The parade of wind-driven rainstorms were blamed for at least 11 deaths due to drownings, mud slides and one storm-triggered heart attack. Another 41 people were injured and--prior to the Yuba River break Thursday night--about 10,000 had been evacuated from their homes, officials said. Additionally, early reports indicate that about 6,000 homes were damaged along with about 120 businesses.

The state Office of Emergency Services estimated statewide storm damage at $220 million to private property and $60 million to public facilities and the figures are expected to climb.

In the delta, a rich farming area and popular vacation land with 1,000 miles of navigable waterways, an estimated 1,500 residents of sparsely populated islands were forced from their homes Thursday as levees gave way along both the south and north forks of the Mokelumne River.

The Coast Guard and Highway Patrol officers staged an early morning rescue as a portion of the river bank collapsed near the town of Thornton, south of Sacramento and just off Interstate 5, inundating large tracts of rich farmland and about a dozen homes.

Residents of the small agricultural hamlet of Walnut Grove, about 20 miles south of Sacramento, fared better as fast-working crews from the Army Corps of Engineers erected an 800-foot-long dike that, temporarily at least, was protecting residents from waters that cover an estimated 10,000 acres. Walnut Grove is sandwiched between the Sacramento and Mokelumne rivers.

Besides Thursday night’s crisis along the Yuba River, the biggest threat remaining, officials said, was from still-rising, record high waters along the Sacramento River near the town of Rio Vista.

State and city crews and an army of 1,070 people from the California Conservation Corps--the largest flood fighting force in the corps’ 10-year history--battled to shore up leaking levees.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Bill Medigovich, director of the state Office of Emergency Services. “But we know there are a few more days remaining that will be critical.”

Gov. George Deukmejian, who was briefed on the flooding by a panel of top experts, formally requested President Reagan to authorize federal disaster assistance for 29 Northern California counties. Seventeen more counties were named official disaster areas late Thursday, joining the 12 declared previously.

The emergency prompted Deukmejian to cancel his planned trip to Washington Saturday for the National Governors Conference.

Tom Mullins, a state emergency services spokesman, said the cost of providing basic assistance to families displaced by the storms is about $2.5 million, but he cautioned that the figure is bound to climb. “You have to wait for the waters to recede before you can assess just how bad it’s been,” Mullins said.

Everyone connected with the massive flood control work said their job had been made infinitely easier by the much-improved weather, heralded by brilliant sunshine that broke through the clouds briefly throughout much of Northern California.

Scattered Showers Forecast

“The long siege of heavy rains in Central California is over,” the National Weather Service proclaimed in its afternoon forecast. Although scattered showers were forecast to continue through much of the night, the weather service said that “overall, the next few days will give Californians a better chance to get reacquainted with the sun.”

The road situation also improved with the reopening of Interstate 80, the main trans-Sierra link between Nevada and the San Francisco Bay Area. However, Sacramento remained cut off from the south as floodwater kept portions of Interstate 5 and California 99 closed.

In South Lake Tahoe, officials asked tourists to stay away as the result of the storm-related failure of a 12-inch gas main. That left 20,000 residents of western Nevada and 50,000 on the California side of the Tahoe Basin without natural gas for heating and cooking. The problem was expected to last as long as four days.

Improving weather conditions had allowed flood control agencies to cut down on the outflow from Folsom Dam, a massive reservoir that feeds the network of waterways that cut through Sacramento and spill into the delta. Until Thursday, the dam had been receiving about 1.5 million gallons of water each second, exceeding the volume it was designed to hold.

“The system that we have worked and worked very well,” said Alex Cunningham, deputy director of the Department of Water Resources. “But, believe me, it was only because of Mother Nature cooperating over the last day that we were able to make it through.”

Along the Sacramento River, however, flood control officials kept a careful watch on heavily populated neighborhoods were water began to leak from the bottom of the levees.

“The major threat now is that we have more water going by the city of Sacramento in the Sacramento River than we’ve ever had in history,” Cunningham said. The water level near the center of the city stood at 30 1/2 feet Thursday, 2 1/2 feet from the top of the levee.

All of that water combines with flows from the Mokelumne River and hundreds of tributaries to end up in the delta where levees were built by property owners over the years with little attention to construction standards.

The area is dotted with small-boat marinas and hundreds of islands that have provided a summertime recreational paradise for fishing and boating enthusiasts. Portions of Grand Island and Tyler Island were inundated when levees crumbled.

Although prone to flooding during much of the winter season, most residents have seen nothing close to the current situation for at least 30 years.

“It’s a catastrophe. It’s just devastating,” said Sandra Clark, manager of the Ryde Hotel near Walnut Grove, which is being used to house some evacuees.

The hotel sits on high ground on Grand Island, one of the few to escape flooding in the last great flood of 1905. Now, it is virtually surrounded by water. “I’m sure everyone is nervous,” Clark said.

In Rio Vista, where all the delta waterways converge, Wallace McCormack, the state official charged with making sure that the levees are properly maintained, sloshed through his home on Edgewater Drive knee-deep in water. Chunks of wood and branches bobbed in his living room.

“I can’t even protect my own house, let alone anyone else’s,” lamented McCormack, president of the state Reclamation Board. His wife, Helen, said that her husband intends to purchase flood insurance for the first time--today.

Damage Toll Added Up

Meanwhile, in northeast California, hit hard earlier in the week, officials began totaling the damage and cleaning up on Thursday.

Nearly half of the preliminary statewide damage total--$110 million--was suffered by the two most severely flooded counties, Napa and Sonoma. Six of the 11 fatalities blamed on the storm also occurred in the two counties.

In Sonoma, the rampaging Russian River overwhelmed Guerneville and half a dozen other small towns. County officials figured that the flood’s cost would run at least $50 million.

The Napa River accounted for the damage in Napa County by pouring over its banks, flooding the cities of Napa, Yountville and St. Helena as well as many world-renowned vineyards. Damage there was estimated at $60 million.

A street-by-street survey of the most severely damaged areas of Napa County gave disaster officials there a striking portrait of the havoc.

Robert Sorson, the deputy county administrator in Napa, said that more than 900 homes were damaged--and at least 250 of them were uninhabitable and would have to be destroyed. All but 15 of those structures were mobile homes formerly huddled in parks along the river. This accounts for about $23 million of the county’s damage total.

Agriculture Hard Hit

Nearly as hard hit was farming in the largely agricultural county. The rains cost growers and ranchers about $20 million--four-fifths of that in the wine industry.

Another $12 million damage was caused to roads and other public facilities. Remaining costs were shared by automobile dealers, many of whom watched their inventories sink under the rising river, and by utility companies.

Even where the water had withdrawn, danger remained.

Residents returning to flood-ravaged areas Thursday were told not to drink tap or well water, no matter how long it was boiled. They also were advised to shun perishables unrefrigerated for more than two hours and all other food in contact with flood water potentially contaminated by backed-up sewers.

Leo C. Wolinsky reported from Sacramento and Stephanie O’Neill from Rio Vista. Times staff writer Mark A. Stein in San Francisco also contributed to this story.