Storm shuts California highway, threatens mudslides
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A woman crosses a flooded sidewalk Monday in Oakland, California.
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CNN's Charles Feldman reports on Californians bracing for more rain -- and potentially more mudslides.
Searchers recover more bodies from flash floods and mudslides in the San Bernardino Mountains.
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LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A fierce Pacific storm shut down a 150-mile stretch of highway in northern California Monday and left the southern part of the state bracing for heavy rainfall that authorities warned could cause more deadly mudslides and flash floods.
A stretch of Interstate 5 from Redding to the Oregon state border was closed to traffic on Monday evening with no plan to re-open after a storm dumped up to 18 inches of snow in the area, causing numerous accidents, the California Highway Patrol said.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service warned the same storm could dump up to six inches of rain on the fire-denuded San Bernardino mountain slopes of Southern California where mudslides killed 14 people and left two children missing on Christmas Day.
A flash flood watch was in effect for most of Southern California for Monday night and Tuesday. State officials warned residents that last week's deadly mudslides underscored the need for residents of areas scorched by California's wildfires to take safety precautions.
But authorities stopped short of ordering mandatory evacuations of the foothill neighborhoods considered most vulnerable to the deadly landslides.
"We're going to react to conditions as they change. We're depending on people to use common sense," said San Bernardino County sheriff's spokesman Chip Patterson.
Residents of burn areas were urged to keep their cars fueled and stocked with emergency supplies, and to evacuate well before the threat of mudflows and flooding was imminent.
Search for victims suspended
Meanwhile authorities Monday suspended their search for the two missing children -- an 8-month-old boy and a 12- to 13-year-old boy -- who were swept away in the Christmas landslides in the San Bernardino Mountains.
The body count in Old Waterman Canyon, about 65 miles east of Los Angeles, rose to 12 Monday as searchers, aided by cadaver-sniffing dogs, dug through deep layers of mud and debris to locate the bodies of a teenager and baby.
The dead were among 28 people from four families who gathered for a Christmas luncheon at a caretaker's cabin at St. Sophia Camp, a retreat run by the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles.
Authorities now believe that the victims were swept away by a powerful wall of mud, water and debris that carried their bodies as far as four miles from the campsite.
A man and a woman died in separate flooding several miles away in Devore that destroyed 32 trailers at a campground and sent 52 people scrambling for higher ground.
Copyright 2003
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
