LOS ANGELES — A powerful Pacific storm blew into Southern and Central California on Friday with wind-driven heavy rains, triggering rescues, calls for evacuations, toppling trees and power lines and disrupting travel and outdoor events.
With the storm feeding on an atmospheric river of moisture stretching far out into the Pacific, precautionary evacuations of homes in some neighborhoods were requested due to the potential for mudslides and debris flows.
“It’s crazy,” said Robin Johnson, an academic adviser at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s just pouring down rain. The wind is just going nuts.”
Using ropes and inflatable boats, firefighters rescued seven people and two dogs from the Sepulveda basin, a recreation and flood-control area along the Los Angeles River. One person was taken to a hospital with a non-life- threatening injury.
Mudslides and flooding partially closed a section of freeway and the Pacific Coast Highway in beach areas.
The storm took aim at Southern California but also spread precipitation north into the San Joaquin Valley and up to San Francisco. It was not expected to bring significant rain in the far north where damage to spillways of the Lake Oroville dam forced evacuation of 188,000 people last weekend.
The National Weather Service said it could end up being the strongest storm to hit Southern California since January 1995.
Elsewhere in the city a tree brought down power lines as it fell on a car, and a person was hospitalized for possible electric shock, the Fire Department said.
By mid-afternoon, hundreds of trees and dozens of power lines had toppled in the Los Angeles area.