This image from video provided by KABC-TV shows a few of hundreds of trucks and cars stranded on State Highway 58 near Mojave, Calif., Friday, October 16, 2015, after torrential rains Thursday caused mudslides that carried away vehicles and closed roads about 70 miles north of Los Angeles.
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“It either got buried or it’s downriver”, Hartle said. Recovery will take significantly longer for the hardest hit areas, including Quartz Hill, Tehachapi, Leona Valley and Lake Hughes, that struck northern Los Angeles County Thursday.
Sgt. Mario Lopez, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, was at the scene as people were being rescued and said it was sheer chaos.
Work continued on two other roads in the Lake Hughes and Lake Elizabeth areas that were inas thunderstorms unleashed flash flooding on Thursday. About 200 cars and semi-trucks were trapped in the now-hardened mud, frozen in place at odd angles. There are vehicles there that will never be able to be used again. Thick coating of mud flow seeped into homes, damaging properties and goods.
The agency will go house to house Friday morning to check on residents. Crews were continuing to assess homes in the area, and Lee said the number of those destroyed could rise.
“It was a raging river of mud”, said 51-year-old Rhonda Flores, who was in her auto when the flooding overtook State Route 58.
He said more than that could be damaged, but crews had to bust through blocked roads before they could get an exact count.
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Interstate 5, which runs the entire length of the state of California, was temporarily shutdown after the much needed rainfall sent various debris including mud and boulders pouring into the freeway, the California Department of Transportation (DoT) reported.
