The atmospheric river that arrived on Sunday has forced evacuations and turned some streets into raging rivers. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for eight counties in Southern California, including Los Angeles.
Topanga resident Chris Kelly spent last night protecting his bike shop from flooding. He tells KCRW that around 11 p.m., his neighbor alerted him that the culverts (storm drains) were blocked. Water was pouring onto Topanga Canyon Boulevard, bringing sand and debris with it.
To protect his store, he repurposed old railroad ties and boards as sandbags, then spent two hours on the road with a shovel to divert water away from his shop and down the canyon.
Bike shop owner Chris Kelly erected an improvised barricade to prevent his store from flooding. Photo by Chris Kelly.
“There was even this one really scary moment where my legs are going down. That felt like quicksand,” he recalls.
Topanga Canyon Boulevard “was basically a river,” according to Kelly. Nearby Topanga Creek rose higher than he had ever seen in his 15 years of living in the area.
The only other people on the roads were firefighters and CalTrans, who came by to help a few times.
What will Kelly do tonight? He says he’s on edge and plans to remain vigilant.
“Because I'm next to the creek … I've started to understand the ebb and flow of it. … If the storm is projected to do one to three inches of rain per hour, then I should go outside and monitor it entirely. If it's not, if it's a light rain or under one inch, then I should also go outside and just constantly … keep the storm drain cleaned out. Because one lousy stick can just flood a whole neighborhood.”
Meanwhile, Jill Cowan, a New York Times reporter currently in Studio City, says all the rapid accumulation of rain makes for a dangerous situation.
“All these rivers, and any body of water that can overtop its bank, is at risk of doing that, if it hasn't already,” she points out.
As for the tens of thousands of Angelenos living on the streets, Cowan says city and county officials are doing their best to get them into emergency/temporary shelters, but some have been “wary of service providers.” There are also a limited number of available beds, and some people are struggling to find shelter.
“It's a really complicated and difficult and unwieldy system that's been developed over a long time. And in Los Angeles, it's imperfect. And so I'm hoping, and I think all officials and outreach workers are hoping everybody can get inside. But I'm sure that there are still folks who are braving the rain.”
The storm is expected to last through Tuesday, so Cowan advises people to stay off roads, look out for flooding, and heed evacuation warnings.