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S. Calif. residents flee floods

The tail end of a nearly weeklong storm buried homes and cars, while threatening mudslides.

Workers shovel mud out onto the Pacific Coast Highway from the entrance to a movie theater in Laguna Beach, Calif. Los Angeles County residents were warned through Thursday to steer clear of contaminated water around storm drains, creeks, and rivers.
Workers shovel mud out onto the Pacific Coast Highway from the entrance to a movie theater in Laguna Beach, Calif. Los Angeles County residents were warned through Thursday to steer clear of contaminated water around storm drains, creeks, and rivers.Read moreDENIS POROY / Associated Press

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. - Axl Dominguez awoke early Wednesday to a bumping sound and looked out the window to a scary sight: plastic trash cans floating down the flooded street.

And then the water came rushing into his house.

"We didn't have time to get anything. It happened really fast," the 15-year-old said, shivering in shorts, a mud-splashed sweatshirt, and bare feet as he waited to go with his family to an evacuation center. "Water started coming in from all the walls. Then the wall fell and we got out through the window."

The tail end of a storm that dumped rain on Southern California for nearly a week gave the region one final lashing, burying houses and cars in mud, washing hillsides onto highways, flooding urban streets, threatening dozens of canyon homes, and spreading filthy water that prompted the closure of 12 miles of Orange County beaches.

Inflatable boats and canoes were used to rescue dozens of motorists and homeowners from flooded streets, hotels, and hillsides. Others refused to leave their homes, even as dirty water and mud sliced through their neighborhoods.

The storm weakened as it moved eastward, but floods still washed away at least six vacant homes in Arizona and inundated parts of Nevada and Utah.

The low-pressure system could be in New Mexico by Thursday and could reach the Gulf Coast by Saturday with some rain, but not the deluge that hit Southern California, forecasters said.

The storm turned the final days before Christmas into a nightmare, and left some residents fearful that more and bigger mudslides could strike the wildfire-scarred hillsides in suburban Los Angeles even after the skies cleared.

Officials ordered evacuation Tuesday of 232 homes in La Canada Flintridge and La Crescenta, suburbs of Los Angeles below steep hillsides that burned in 2009 and where mudslides inundated homes and yards in February.

"The ground is so saturated it could move at any time," and the threat will remain for several weeks, said Bob Spencer, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

Olivia Brown, 45, left her Paradise Valley home in the La Canada Flintridge area about midnight.

"I'm worried about a rock coming down on the house," Brown said at a Red Cross shelter. "My husband stayed home with two of our dogs. He had to be a man, you know, and hold down the fort."

In San Diego, the first floor of the Premier Inn in the city's Mission Valley flooded, forcing guests to the second floor where lifeguards were sent to rescue them, police said. SeaWorld San Diego closed for the day as waters rose in the nearby San Diego River.

Sixty people were rescued and more than 30 homes evacuated when water surged through Dove Canyon, a gated Orange County community.

In Highland, about 65 miles east of Los Angeles, two creeks overflowed, swamping as many as 20 homes in up to 3 feet of mud. Nearly 250 homes have been evacuated.

Los Angeles County health officials warned residents to be careful through Thursday of polluted water around storm drains, creeks, and rivers. The environmental group Heal the Bay said ocean water could remain contaminated with bacteria for much longer than that.