16 killed in weather-related incidents as California continues to be pummeled by rain, high winds

Two motorists in Visalia, California are the latest fatalities of the state’s historic storms after a tree fell on their vehicle on State Route 99 around 6am Tuesday. 

The incident in the Northern California area caused multiple vehicles to crash, California Highway Patrol officials said after the crash.

The deaths come just hours after a mother and daughter were rescued from a sinkhole in a Los Angeles neighborhood overnight after the road they were on continued to ‘sluff and deteriorate’ from heavy rain hitting the area. 

The massive storm, caused by a series of atmospheric rivers, has wreaked havoc across the state, including residents in star-studded Montecito, California – including Prince Harry and Meghan, Oprah, and Ellen, all of whom have been warned to evacuate.

The Golden State saw no relief from drenching rains on Tuesday as roads turned into gushing flood zones, forcing the evacuation of thousands in towns with histories of deadly mudslides. 

Rainfall throughout the day was expected to be ‘heavy to excessive’ across the state, especially in southern California, as winds gusts were clocked at more than 40 miles an hour in many places, the National Weather Service said.

Since the storms began last week, 16 people have died in weather-related incidents in the state. On Sunday, President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration, granting California access to funding and resources desperately needed.

The sinkhole rescue took place around 7.20pm in Chatsworth, a neighborhood located between Santa Clarita and Los Angeles. 

In total, four people were inside the sinkhole in two cars that fell in but two were able to exit on their own, according to Los Angeles Fire Department officials. 

Iverson Road where the sinkhole opened up had continued to ‘sluff and deteriorate’ from the heavy rainfall and inclement weather. 

Additionally, Battalion Chief Andrew Wordin said on Twitter the rescue was complicated as  ‘more water [that] had been flowing down the street and was filling the hole.’ 

Firefighters were able to use a rope and aerial ladder to pull out the two women and they were taken to local hospitals for minor injuries.   

The entire road is now compromised by the sinkhole, officials said, and the hole is ‘fully cutting across southbound lanes of Iverson Road.’ 

To the east, another roadway was blocked after a ‘big rock’ fell onto Malibu Canyon Road, completely cutting off traffic flow in the area. 

Another shocking video shared by the California Highway Patrol Monday shows a massive boulder, roughly the size of a vehicle, toppling down a mountainside. 

The incident happened on State Route 168 in Fresno. 

The 23-second clip shows rocks and trees tumbling down onto the roadway, which is also seen flooded with rainwater pooling towards the rocks. 

‘Unbelievable’ wrote one Facebook user. 

‘Look at all that water flowing across the highway too’ wrote another user. 

California Highway Patrol shared an update on the blocked roadway Tuesday afternoon, showing two massive CAT trucks moving the boulder. 

‘That’s one hell of a rock. Thanks to all of ya that are working so hard to clear our roads and to all of you keeping our Community Safe,’ said one person responding to the video.

The blocked roads are just the latest in a string of heavy damage across the state as residents cope with a high volume of rainfall and windspeeds upwards of 60 miles per hour in some area. 

The winds wreaked havoc on the power grid, knocking out electricity to tens of thousands of Californians. 

As of Tuesday morning, more than 220,000 homes and businesses were without electricity on Tuesday morning, according to data from Poweroutage.us.

At least 16 people have died since the storms began last week. A five-year-old boy was swept away in floodwaters on Monday when his mother’s truck got stuck in a creek near Paso Robles. As conditions worsened, the search was called off. 

On Tuesday afternoon, officials announced the search had resumed for Kyle Doan, the missing boy.  

The National Weather Service said the rain was expected to continue through Tuesday after dumping up to 14 inches of rain, and believed to dump as much as seven more inches by Wednesday that could produce widespread flooding, rapid water rises, mudslides and landslides.

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The town of about 9,000 people is a favorite of American entertainment royalty such as Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Katy Perry, Rob Lowe and Larry David. It was expected to get up to eight inches of rain in 24 hours – on hillsides already sodden by weeks of downpours. 

Emergency authorities in the town, which lies 90 minutes from Los Angeles, said anyone in the area should get out.

‘LEAVE NOW! This is a rapidly evolving situation. Please pay close attention to emergency alerts,’ a fire department website said.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have lived in their $14 million million home in the quiet seaside city since 2020 after stepping back from their royal duties that year. 

Harry was in New York City on Monday at the time of the evacuation order for the launch of his new tell-all memoir Spare. It was unclear where Meghan and the couple’s two children are, or whether they have evacuated from the home.

Spokespeople for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are yet to respond to a request for comment from the MailOnline on whether they have been forced to leave.

Jamie McLeod’s property was under the Montecito evacuation order, but she said there was no way for her to ‘get off the mountain’ with a rushing creek on one side and a mudslide on the other. 

The 60-year-old owner of the Santa Barbara Bird Sanctuary said one of her employees came to make a weekly food delivery and also became stuck.

McLeod said she feels fortunate because her home sits on high ground and the power is still on. But she tires of the frequent evacuation orders since the massive wildfire followed by the deadly landslide five years ago.

‘It is not easy to relocate,’ McLeod said. ‘I totally love it, except in catastrophe.’

Meanwhile, as authorities ordered about ten thousand residents in the Santa Barbara County community to evacuate, they also confirmed the deaths of 14 people.

The five-year-old boy who was swept away is not included in the rolling death toll, as his fate is currently unknown, according to WION news.

Rescuers were forced to call off the search for the boy who, was swept up in the floodwaters. The search efforts were called off at around 3pm on Monday because the current and rising water levels of the Salinas River in northern California were too dangerous for drivers.

Authorities say the boy’s mother was driving a white truck Monday morning when it became stranded in the floodwaters near Paso Robles.

Bystanders were able to pull the mother out of the truck, Tom Swanson, the assistant chief of CalFire/ the San Luis Obispo Fire Department said. But the boy was carried out of the vehicle and swept downstream.

Firefighters later found one of the boy’s shoes, but crews were still not able to locate the child more than five hours later. But authorities are not yet declaring the boy dead.  

Emergency authorities Montecito, which lies 90 minutes from Los Angeles, said anyone in the area should get out.

‘LEAVE NOW! This is a rapidly evolving situation. Please pay close attention to emergency alerts,’ a fire department website said.

Reporters on the ground said police roadblocks had been set up to prevent people from getting into the town, where several roads were flooded.

Experts say the growing frequency and intensity of such storms, interspersed with extreme dry spells, are symptoms of climate change, posing greater challenges to managing California’s precious water supplies while minimizing risks of floods, mudslides and wildfires.

The weather service’s forecast comes after the evacuation of some 25,000 people, including the entire picturesque town Montecito, an affluent coastal enclave 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and nearby areas of the Santa Barbara coast, due to heightened flood and mudslide risks.

The Montecito evacuation zone was among 17 California regions where authorities worry the ongoing torrential downpours could unleash lethal cascades of mud, boulders and other debris in hillsides stripped bare of vegetation by past wildfires.

The torrential rains, along with heavy snow in mountain areas, are the product of yet another ‘atmospheric river’ of dense moisture funneled into California from the tropical Pacific, powered by sprawling low-pressure systems churning offshore.

Montecito, whose multi-million dollar properties are perched in breathtaking California countryside, is particularly vulnerable to mudslides because it sits at the foot of a mountain range that was ravaged by fire five years ago.

Hundreds of square miles of land were scorched in 2017 and 2018, denuding the hillsides of the vegetation that normally keeps soil in place. 

In a video on Monday, Ellen DeGeneres braved treacherous conditions outside her in the town to show the ‘unprecedented rain’ the town is being hammered with.

Wearing just a gray sweatshirt, the comedian showed how a creek next to her home was raging during the powerful storm — blaming it on climate change.

‘The creek next to our home never floods, never,’ she said, revealing: ‘It’s probably about 9 feet up. We need to be nicer to Mother Nature, cause Mother Nature’s not happy with us,’ she continued.

DeGeneres said her home is on high ground so she was allowed to shelter in place. All residents in the larger Santa Barbara County, home to Montecito, were ordered to shelter in place as well. 

Monday’s evacuation order came five years to the day after heavy rain had sent torrents of mud into the town, killing 23 people.

‘Over the last 30 days, Montecito has received 12-20+ inches of rain across the community, exceeding our yearly average of 17 inches,’ Montecito Fire said on Twitter on Monday. ‘This cumulative, saturating rain puts the community at greater risk of flooding and debris flow.’

The orders come as the state continues to see damage from a series of atmospheric rivers and storms which have left many trapped in their homes, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced.

On Monday, the death toll from the storm rose to 14 when the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services reported that two more people died from falling trees. One was a homeless person in Sacramento and the other was inside their home.

California remains under a state of emergency, and President Joe Biden has vowed to send emergency services to the area. 

Along with Montecito, Toro Canyon, Sycamore Canyon, and Padaro Lane were ordered to leave. 

‘Leave now,’ the official Santa Barbara County emergency website states. 

All other Santa Barbara County residents are being told to stay where they are for the time being.  

‘SHELTER IN PLACE. Flooding, Santa Barbara County impact areas. Go to innermost room or high ground. DO NOT attempt to leave. If already evacuated, remain out of the area,’ a tweet from the Santa Barbara Office of Emergency Management reads.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said the decision to evacuate narly 10.000 people was ‘based on the continuing high rate of rainfall with no indication that that is going to change before nightfall.’

He noted that creeks were overflowing and many roads were flooded. 

The orders come five years to the day after 23 people in Montecito were killed in a mudslide, one journalist on Twitter pointed out.

This is the second evacuation order for the Southern California area in a week. 

Last Wednesday evening, an order was issued for the Alisal, Thomas, and Cave fire burn areas over mudslide concerns. The area continues to be one of two Southern California counties expected to see the heaviest rainfall. 

The storms are so severe in some areas school districts canceled classes, including the Sacramento City Unified School District, which had six campuses without electricity completely, the Sacramento Bee reported.

The National Weather Service warned of a ‘relentless parade of atmospheric rivers’ – storms that are long plumes of moisture stretching out into the Pacific and are capable of dropping staggering amounts of rain and snow. 

Two major storms are expected to drop heavy rainfall on the coast and snow in the mountains over the next couple of days.

A swathe of the Golden State was under flood warnings, as it struggled to cope with yet more rain on top of near-record downpours in recent weeks – with even more forecast over the coming days.

‘Two major episodes of heavy rain and heavy mountain snow are expected to impact California in quick succession during the next couple of days in association with two of the more energetic and moisture-laden parade of cyclones that are aiming directly for’ the state, the National Weather Service said.

More rain will follow throughout Tuesday, while the Sierra Nevada mountains could get hit with up to six feet of snow, making for hazardous conditions.

Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency and on Sunday was granted a presidential emergency declaration.

‘We expect to see the worst of it still ahead of us,’ Newsom told reporters at the time.

There were about 224,291 homes were without power in the state as of Tuesday morning.

Biden’s emergency declaration now provides state and local officials with resources and help for counties hit hardest by the storms, which include: El Dorado, Los Angeles, Mariposa, Mendocino, Merced, Monterey, Napa, Placer, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, Stanislaus and Ventura counties. 

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will also authorize equipment and resources to the state for assistance. 

Newsom in a tweet Monday thanked Biden for his ‘swift approval’ of the emergency declaration for the state. 

The governor said his office had been in constant contact with the White House and this will help the state get ahead of the incoming storms and subsequent damage. 

‘We know what’s coming and anticipating we’re better off getting ahead of it than waiting for the actual event to occur,’ Newsom said. 

‘In so many ways, I think it’s a preview of what’s to come,’ the governor continued. 

While heavy rain is not unusual for California during the winter, these downpours are testing the state.

They come as much of the western US is more than two decades into a punishing drought that has seen a large increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires.

Scientists say human-caused climate change, brought about by the unchecked burning of fossil fuels, has supercharged these wild swings in weather, making droughts more severe and rainfall more intense when it does occur.

Even the recent heavy rains have not been enough to reverse the drought.

Scientists say several years of above-average rainfall are needed to get reservoirs back to healthy levels.