Flood Victims Clog Roads to Return Home

As flood waters receded Sunday, more than 10,000 refugees were permitted to return to their waterlogged homes and authorities found the body of a man floating in a slough, bringing to at least 14 the number of deaths from a devastating siege of California storms.

A massive traffic jam clogged roads leading into Linda and nearby Olivehurst, south of Marysville, as the final contingent of refugees from the two towns were able to return for the first time since Thursday night, when a levee along the Yuba River gave way with no warning.

But hundreds of residents of the low-lying west part of Linda arrived to find their homes still swamped by as much as six feet of water.

Emergency officials were considering whether to drain the water by breaking a hole in another levee along the nearby Bear River. But officials said parts of Linda could still be under water for a week or more, hampering a house-to-house search for more victims of the flood. Yuba County officials said many of the returning evacuees of both towns would be camping out in their homes without the benefit of functioning water or sewage systems.

Danger Persists

State officials to the south in Sacramento, meanwhile, warned that the danger of levee breaks and flooding will persist along the Sacramento River for several more days as seepage occurs in dozens of places from Sacramento southward to the already flood-damaged Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

“There continues to be widespread localized problems,” said Tom Mullins of the state Office of Emergency Services. “There is still plenty of water on the ground, but crews are addressing the problems and so far things are under control. It’s looking much better today.”

In Robbins, about 20 miles southwest of Linda, crews neared completion of an emergency bow-shaped earthen barrier 400 feet long to bolster the sagging levee that protects the small farming town from the Sutter Bypass of the Sacramento River. About 500 residents, who had been forced to evacuate Saturday, were permitted to return to their homes briefly Sunday to change clothes.

To the south in San Joaquin County, about 1,400 people remained homeless because of a levee break on the Mokelumne River in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Officials said they probably would not be allowed to return home before Friday.

The discovery of the body of a 64-year-old man in Jack Slough, north of Marysville, raised to at least 14 the number of weather-related deaths in the state since a series of storms swept in from the Pacific beginning Feb. 12. Northern California was inundated by the heavy rain and snow, creating the highest waters of the century in the delta system.

The Yuba County Sheriff’s Department said the victim, whose name was withheld, was the same man seen stuck in the slough while attempting to ford it in his pickup truck sometime before the Linda flood Thursday. By the time a rescue helicopter arrived 15 minutes later, he had vanished.

Meantime, divers in Placer County pressed their search for the body of Frank Arroyo, 41, of Roseville, a welder who presumably drowned after he jumped into the angry Bear River to avoid flames from an explosion that occurred while he and two co-workers repaired a flood-damaged railroad bridge.

In west Linda, the area hardest hit by flooding, hundreds of people returned home Sunday only to discover their houses still flooded.

Traveling down the streets of Linda by boat, Cecil Rife found his house filled with four feet of water and spotted his daughter’s pet cockapoo alive after three days alone.

“We went down there in a boat, kicked in the window and got her dog out,” Rife said. “He was floating on a bed.”

Evacuation Orders Refused

At least five men refused orders to evacuate Linda and chose instead to camp on the roofs of their adjoining houses for three nights rather than report to a crowded emergency shelter. They told stories of listening helplessly to the screams of dogs and cats as they drowned in the surging waters and of beating back swimming rats seeking safety on the roofs.

“It was awful, you could hear it all night long,” said Ron Jarrie, 31, of the abandoned howling pets. “There wasn’t anything you could do about it.”

Neighbors Jarrie, Fred Herchuk, 31, Cesar Mercado, 23, a man who identified himself only as “J. B.” and Ed Nicolace, 34, an unemployed computer technician who was visiting from Rhode Island, used a wood plank to link the two roofs. On one roof, a tent was pitched along with a large American flag.

Earlier, they had loaded women and children and two pet dogs into tow cars and sent them to stay with relatives.

However, “J. B,” who first decided to stay, told a reporter, “Hell, I’m not going to kid you. I’d never seen a flood and I just wanted to see what it looked like.”

Sunday seemed almost a perfect day for a homecoming--sunny, warm and so clear that the snow-capped Sierra Nevada, many miles away, was clearly visible. The conditions had been much the same on Thursday, when the surprise flood let go with a torrent of Yuba River water that inundated the two towns and 28 square miles of some of the richest farmland in the state.

In all, the levee break and flood drove 24,000 people from their homes in Linda and Olivehurst. A first wave of about 13,000 refugees had been allowed back Saturday.

Anxious to return to find whether they still had homes, the remaining evacuees created a four-mile traffic jam into Linda Sunday.

Bob Massey, who makes and repairs race car engines in his home garage, returned to find his engines ruined, furniture soaked and an ugly four-foot-high water line on his living room walls.

“You hear about it, but you never expect it to happen to you,” he said.

Richard C. Paddock reported from Sacramento; Kenneth F. Bunting from Linda. Times staff writers Carl Ingram and Leo C. Wolinsky in Sacramento also contributed to this article.