Storm Kills Two Highway Patrol Officers At Least 5 Others Die As Mudslides, Tornadoes, Snow And Rain Continue To Rack California

Two California Highway Patrol officers on their way to help a disabled motorist were killed Tuesday when their patrol car was pitched into a gushing river swollen by a savage El Nino storm that killed at least five others and caused mudslides and tornadoes.

The two-day storm, the worst from El Nino this winter, blew out of the waterlogged state just hours after the officers and at least three other drivers had been sucked into the muddy river.

Two men were rescued by helicopter, but divers searched for other victims in the Cuyama River near Santa Maria, about 200 miles north of Los Angeles, after part of state Highway 166 gave way.

The patrol car carrying officers Rick Stovall and Brit Irvine was found upside down, buried under silt, mud and debris. Crews with cranes attempted to lift it from the river, which washed out 100 yards of the rural highway.

The veteran officers, who were working the graveyard shift, were answering a call about a disabled motorist. The last radio contact with them was at 2:45 a.m., Lt. Paul Matthies said at a news conference.

“They were out doing what they are supposed to do. They were out helping the public,” Matthies said.

Matthies said a chaplain is helping other officers through their grief.

“The highway patrol is a family,” he said. “We’re going to be going through a rough time. It hits very hard.”

The two men rescued by helicopter were being treated for hypothermia at a hospital. One was in good condition; the other was undergoing surgery to repair a scalp injury.

Elsewhere in California, two college students were killed when a tree fell on cars in the Los Angeles suburb of Claremont; a man died in a mudslide in Orange County; and one person died in a pileup on a fog-shrouded and flooded highway in the San Joaquin Valley.

One person also was killed and four were missing in a car that washed away in Tijuana, Mexico.

In Northern California, waves chewed into a cliff beneath eight precariously perched homes in Pacifica south of San Francisco, and residents remained barred from 500 homes around Clear Lake north of Santa Rosa as the lake rose to its highest level since 1909.

In the Sierra Nevadas, El Nino dumped up to 2 feet of snow, triggering a road-closing avalanche south of Reno, Nev.

The storm also slammed into Arizona, Utah, Nevada and New Mexico with rain and snow, and Wyoming and Colorado were next in line. A steady rain fell Tuesday over Las Vegas, which has recorded its wettest February ever, with 2.85 inches of rain so far.

In California, a wall of mud plowed down Laguna Beach Canyon Road in Orange County about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, tossing about residents as they scrambled from their homes, said police Sgt. Bob Rahaeuser.

“I was just rocking and rolling and just desperately crawling my way to the top of wherever I was,” Ann Quilter said. “Every second, you’re trying to keep your hands in front of your face to create an air pocket so you can breathe.”

At daybreak, rescue workers found feet protruding from the mud, then unearthed the body of Glenn Flook, 25, outside one of the homes. Flook had sought refuge at the home from his flood-damaged house.

Eight of the 10 mud-covered victims, including Quilter, were released from the hospital, Rahaeuser said.

Throughout California, roads were closed by mudslides and sinkholes.

In San Diego, an underground stormwater drainpipe burst just after midnight, carving a gigantic sinkhole - 65 feet deep, 25 feet wide and some 700 feet long - at the I-15 on-ramp at Balboa Avenue.

Oscar Johnson jumped out of his car and helped a woman flee before the ground cracked open and swallowed her car. “You could feel the ground under you trembling and sucking down,” Johnson said. “She jumped out and we ran. … Then her whole car just went down.”

Two tornadoes - almost unheard-of in Southern California - touched down overnight, one in Huntington Beach and one in Long Beach. The twisters ripped up storage sheds and carport awnings and knocked down trees and fences.