Two days of heavy rain in Southern California turned some streets in Long Beach into shallow rivers as some residents took to kayaks in what appeared for some to be more an entertaining novelty than a weather disaster.
Others took the flooding more seriously, as one local news outlet reported some homes employed sandbags as a buffer against rising waters in a community accustomed to days of Southern California sunshine.
Resident Tim Morrisse said people were not prepared for the deluge.
“The water just started coming up really fast,” Morrisse told ABC’s affiliate in Los Angeles. “I put some sandbags around the house. It’s almost in the house. It’s a little scary.”
The Long Beach man said such flooding is typical of heavy rains when storm drains get clogged, though he added the weekend presented one of the worst flooding he’s seen in the community.
Other weather-related factors could have caused the flooding.
The Long Beach Public Works Department reported that a power outage caused a couple of Los Angeles County-maintained pumps to go offline.
Lighter rainfall hit the Los Angeles area on Sunday, with the last of the storm that is blowing in off the Pacific Ocean predicted to end by Tuesday.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles-based crime novel, Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
