‘It’s One Big Sea’; 2 Towns Awash in Flood

Another 24,000 flood victims were left homeless Friday by a rampaging river that ripped through an earthen levee and spread water over a vast area of lush farmland in what could be the last disaster in northern California’s nine days of battering from Pacfic storms.

The Yuba River crashed through the levee suddenly Thursday night, inundating the community of Linda and spreading water into nearby Olivehurst. All of the residents of the two communities were evacuated by noon Friday. About 6,500 people took refuge at Beale Air Force Base.

Damage Survey

The state Office of Emergency Services in Sacramento said preliminary reports listed 43 people with minor injuries, 20 homes ruined and 100 others damaged.

“It’s one big sea,” Russ Reed, a retired Oakland Tribune photographer, said after flying over the area. “Everything is inundated for 20 square miles. . . . It looked the same as the 1955 Yuba City (three miles west of Linda) floods.”

The 1955 disaster killed 54 people and caused millions of dollars in damage.

Meanwhile, officials at the state Flood Operations Center in Sacramento said the danger of levee breaks in the Sacramento-San Joa quin Delta was lessening by the hour as partly cloudy skies covered the area for the second consecutive day.

“Flows are reducing from all emptying reservoirs,” spokesman John Payne said. Several levees there collapsed Wednesday night because of the rain runoff. The National Weather Service said no more rain is expected for the next couple of days.

The storms earlier last week forced evacuations in the delta, the Russian River resort area, Napa Valley and the Petaluma area 25 miles north of San Francisco. Emergency services officials said preliminary damage estimates throughout the northern part of the state showed 13 confirmed deaths, 96 injuries, 326 homes destroyed and 6,477 homes damaged. They said the dollar loss so far was estimated at $200 million but could increase to more than $300 million.

Residents of Linda and Olivehurst were taken by surprise when the levee broke on the Yuba River, just south of where it was joined by the Feather River. State officials stopped releasing water from the Feather River’s Oroville Dam to lessen the flow of flood water and permit truckloads of rocks to be dumped in the 100-foot-wide Yuba River break.

Officials said it could take as long as a week to seal the levee, and it might be several days before the refugees can return to their homes.

‘We Had a Break’

Less than a mile from the break was Linda’s Peach Tree Mall.

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

An emergency radio station broadcast evacuation warnings in English, Spanish and Punjabi. The area has a large Sikh population, as well as many Latino farm laborers. The message advised people trapped in their houses to display white flags made from sheets or linen to alert search crews.

Many of the evacuees took refuge in a large Sikh temple and at high schools from Yuba City to Wheatland as well as at the air base. Many families were separated in the disaster and spent hours trying to find relatives.

Long Line of Cars

A line of cars stretched 2 1/2 miles outside of Beale as people inched toward shelter.

“I found water in the house and thought it must have come from the bathroom,” Virgil Smith said. “There must have been a pipe broke or something. I opened the front door, and it came in the house from the outside. Then I knew what it was.”

Cindy Archer said a neighbor who had a police radio scanner told her about the levee break. The mother of two said, “We just grabbed our clothes and ran and got out.”

Gas Cut Off

Meanwhile, an estimated 80,000 residents of western Nevada and the Lake Tahoe Basin were forced to use fireplaces, electric blankets or wood stoves to keep warm for the second consecutive day. They have been without natural gas since Wednesday when a 12-inch Southwest Gas Corp. line burst.