Southern Californians woke up to a drenched, dirt-clogged world Monday, Aug. 21 after Tropical Storm Hilary cleared out of the area overnight, leaving some residents to dig out from the mud and sweep away tree branches and other debris by morning.
The tropical storm, downgraded from a hurricane after making landfall on the Baja California peninsula in Mexico on Sunday, was the first for the greater Los Angeles area in more than 80 years. Public officials warned of potential major damage: Life-threatening floods and treacherous conditions from rain-slickened roadways and downed trees and power lines.
Hilary indeed dumped a historic amount of rain across the region.
Inland areas in particular saw significant flooding on roadways. Palm Springs had its wettest day on record. Communities like Oak Glen and Forest Falls in the San Bernardino Mountains, and Wrightwood in the San Gabriel Mountains, saw powerful mudflows, carrying logs and boulders, thunder down creek beds, threatening to overflow their banks. A surge of water and mud washed away a bridge in Banning and closed a portion of the 10 Freeway in the San Gorgonio Pass.
As of Monday afternoon, one person was missing after the rain-related chaos but there were no confirmed fatalities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
“As of right now,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in a morning news conference from the city’s emergency-operations center, “there have not been any deaths, or significant risk of injury.”
Police and firefighters in all areas responded to a surge in car crashes on local freeways on Sunday and Monday. In San Bernardino County, firefighters were “exceptionally busy” responding to traffic collisions, handling “two to three times our normal calls,” said Battalion Chief Mike McClintock of the county’s fire department.
In L.A., the city’s fire chief said her department responded to more than 1,800 incidents Sunday into Monday morning.
“This…
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