Record rainfall does little harm
The first significant storm of the season was moving out of Southern California on Wednesday night after dumping record amounts of rain in some areas but causing little further damage in the hillside areas denuded earlier this month by wildfires.
Flash flood warnings for some areas remained in effect throughout much of the day, however.
Cloudy skies -- and a 30% chance of showers this morning -- were forecast for the Thanksgiving holiday, and the National Weather Service was predicting mostly sunshine for Friday.
The Pacific storm that rolled into the area Tuesday, prompting officials to issue mudslide warnings in the burn areas, caused power outages and traffic accidents and further snarled roadways already jammed with early holiday drivers.
Residents of the fire-ravaged neighborhoods of Yorba Linda were roused from their sleep at 2 a.m. Wednesday and ordered to evacuate because of the rain but were allowed to return home later in the day. About 3,400 people were affected.
Evacuation orders for parts of Santa Barbara County, affecting some 2,200 households, were also lifted Wednesday.
In Sylmar, residents affected by the Sayre fire fortified their homes with sandbags. Olive View Medical Center, which was damaged in the fire, was not affected by any mudslides, Los Angeles County officials said Wednesday.
Officials told the county Board of Supervisors that workers had installed 400 feet of rails outside the hospital to divert floodwater.
Drainage engineers were supervising the construction of temporary structures to contain possible mudflows and were exploring the possibility of reseeding the area, officials said.
During the fire, flames reached the hospital’s edge, knocking out power and leaving Olive View dependent on a generator and a self-contained power plant that failed. Officials later traced the problem to a fuel pump at the power plant but still are investigating why it failed.
In Yorba Linda, officials credited the limited damage to sandbags and concrete water barriers that had been put in place before the rain began.
“That preemptive work really helped,” said Capt. Greg McKeown of the Orange County Fire Authority.
In addition to this month’s fire and rain, a 3.0 earthquake hit near Yorba Linda about 11 a.m. Wednesday. The quake was centered seven miles southeast of the city, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. No damage was reported, but the city received reports of possible fissures.
Rainfall records were set in several areas, including 1.23 inches at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and 1.26 inches in Woodland Hills, the National Weather Service said. More than an inch of rain fell in some mountain areas of northern Santa Barbara County, and, by late afternoon Wednesday, 1.6 inches had been recorded for downtown Los Angeles.
The rain caused a crack to develop in a slope behind a duplex in Yorba Linda, prompting authorities to “yellow tag” the building. Flooding closed the northbound lanes of Interstate 5 in San Diego for several hours after two vehicles crashed. In San Diego County, health officials closed beaches near the border after rain caused sewage-contaminated water from Mexico to spill into the ocean.
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james.wagner@latimes.com
jean.merl@latimes.com
Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.
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