Crashes Occur During Flood Disaster
California has had a rough summer. It’s suffered through droughts and now flooding. Not uncommon for the sunshine state though. A late summer storm has wreaked havoc over the week. The storm has brought on a heavy rain, meaning heavy water increases. The flood though, has started its damage on local freeways and roads, it’s left thousands of homes and businesses without power, and even prompted an evacuation of one hundred residents at a residential building.
SigAlerts let people know what roads to avoid and in the last week there have been several SigAlerts. The flooding and rain slicked roadways have caused many crashes. According to the California Highway Patrol, with just several hours after the rain starting, there were dozens of collisions being reported in the region.
One of the bad incidents was overnight, in the Pasadena area. It happened on the Westbound 210 Freeway transition road at the 134 Freeway. There was a McDonald’s semi-trailer truck that was jack knifed and then overturned. Which of course blocked the road which could be scene from a video of the scene.
The SigAlert happened rather early, around five o’clock in the morning. The California Highway Patrol officials have said that the SigAlert would last for several hours.
SigAlert Lasts For Hours After Flood Crash
According to the California Highway Patrol, 7:50 in the morning the 710 northbound freeway in the Bell area had to be shut down until further notice due to flooding. It’s was not for certain how long the lanes had to be closed for.
Other roads of course, had to be shut down due to flooding as well. Some of those were the northern lanes of Newport Boulevard between the Hospital Road and Coast Highway, according to the Newport Beach Police Department.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said that the rain was also responsible for flooding an assisted living facility, which was in the 800 block of West Knoll Drive in West Hollywood.
There are more than one hundred people that had to be evacuated from the building. Four of those evacuation had to be taken to the hospital, according to the a Sheriff’s Department’s spokesperson.
The flooding was caused by an “extensive roof leak” in the roof, which was under repair from a previous incident in July, authorities said.
Evacuated residents were being taken to a shelter or community for the time being, according to the spokesperson.
Meanwhile, more than 6,000 Southern California Edison were without power overnight as a result of service outages, two of which were deemed weather-related.
The largest outage was in an unincorporated part of Ventura County in the Ojai area, where roughly 3,200 customers were without electricity, the utility reported.
Service was expected to be restored in the area by 9:30 a.m., according to Southern California Edison’s website.
In Montebello, more than 2,500 customers were without electricity, while more than 1,100 residents were impacted in Long Beach, according to the utility.
The storm was the result of a developing low pressure system off of North California combining with remnant moisture from former Hurricane Linda, the National Weather Service reported.
It was expected to dump up to one-half inch of rain in L.A. County, with the highest totals along coastal slopes, federal forecasters said. But nearly 5 hours after the rain began, it had already dumped about an inch in downtown L.A.
In general, higher rainfall amounts were expected to be focused from the county southward.
Other areas were expected to receive less than a quarter-inch of rain, according to the weather service.
Since many Southland areas have seen little- to- no rainfall in the past two months, forecasters warned that the storm could lead to “extra slippery” driving conditions, caused by a buildup of oil on roads.
The rainfall could also cause some minor urban roadway flooding across the county, something that may be worsened by clogged storm drains and culverts, the weather service warned.
A flood advisory was in effect in L.A. County and the extreme eastern part of Ventura County. The advisory was scheduled to expire at 6:45 a.m., forecasters said.
In addition to rain, some interior sections were also expected to be hit by southwest winds , with gusts as high as 50 mph in the Antelope Valley.
Periods of rain would last through Wednesday, the weather service reported.
Daniel A. Gibalevich
DAG Law Firm
