Hundreds flooded out of homes
FERNLEY, Nev. – A ruptured levee sent a frigid “wall of water” from a rain-swollen canal into this high desert town early Saturday, flooding hundreds of homes and forcing the rescue of dozens of people by helicopter and boat.
To the west, a dangerous layer of heavy snow covered the Northern California mountains as rain and wind from the third storm in as many days hit the West Coast. The storms have been blamed for at least three deaths, and hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in California, Oregon and Washington were without power Saturday.
No injuries were reported in the flood in Fernley, about 30 miles east of Reno, after a section of the Truckee Canal levee up to 150 feet long broke soon after 4 a.m.
As many as 3,500 people were temporarily stranded and an estimated 1,500 ended up being displaced from their homes, Lyon County Fire Chief Scott Huntley said Saturday night. About 25 people remained at a shelter set up at a high school after a peak of about 150 earlier in the day.
Eric Cornett estimated the water was about 2 feet deep and rising fast when he drove away from his home with his wife and three children.
“We saw water coming in the back door and tried to grab as much stuff as possible to save it. The water was rising very quickly and it was scary. The water was freezing. I couldn’t even feel my feet,” he said.
Huntley, one of the first on the scene, described it as a “wall of water about 2 feet high going down Farm District Road.”
“In some places folks had to deal with 8 feet of water,” he said. “Firefighters were in chest-deep water making rescues.”
Two helicopters aided rescue crews in pontoons in rescuing at least 18 people from driveways and rooftops. Local residents in fishing boats rescued many more.
By afternoon, the Truckee River water flowing into the canal was diverted upstream, said Ernie Schank, president of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District. As the water receded, Fernley Mayor Todd Cutler said he had reports of damage to at least 300 to 400 homes.
One official suggested burrowing rodents might have contributed to the break in the levee along with the heavy rains, but the cause wasn’t clear.
The National Weather Service recorded 1.91 inches of rain at Reno-Tahoe International Airport on Friday, a record. Reno averages only 8 inches of rainfall annually and Fernley only about 5 inches.
Gov. Jim Gibbons, who visited the shelter and toured the area by helicopter on Saturday, declared the county an emergency area.
Avalanche warnings were posted for the backcountry of the central Sierra Nevada and flash flood warnings were in effect for many areas of Southern California, where large swaths of hillsides had been denuded by the fall’s wildfires.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared emergencies in three counties hit hard by the storms.
Remote sensors and ski areas in the high Sierra Nevada had recorded up to 5 feet of snow since Friday morning, and the west side of the Lake Tahoe Basin already had 4 to 5 feet by Friday night, the National Weather Service office in Reno, Nev., said Saturday.
As much as 9 feet of snow was possible in the Sierra by today.
An 80-mile stretch of U.S. Interstate 80 from Reno to Applegate, Calif., was closed Saturday night as the fresh wave of snow moved in.
The weather also was blamed for a 17-car pileup that closed the westbound lanes of I-80 near Patrick just east of the Reno-Sparks area Saturday afternoon.
U.S. 50 in California from Pollock Pines to Meyers had been shut down because of the risk of avalanche.
“That essentially shuts down every pass in the Sierra,” said Ken Gosting, executive director of Transportation Involves Everyone in Yosemite Valley. “All the passes being closed is very unusual. It happens once every 15 years.”
More than 450,000 homes and businesses from the Bay Area to the Central Valley were in the dark Saturday, down from more than 1.6 million the day before. It could be days before all the lights are back on, Pacific Gas & Electric officials said.