By Andrew Silva
San Bernardino County Sun (California)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — As lightning flashed all around and hail pounded roofs with a freight-train roar, residents of Pershing and Electric avenues started shoving blankets and towels under their doors. It didn’t help.
“It was surprising. It happened within minutes. Just gushes of water,” said Stephanie Vessey, 34, as a water-removal crew worked Saturday on getting the sodden carpets out of her house. “It just came in. There was nothing we could do.”
Up and down the well-kept, working-class streets, residents were pushing shovels and brooms to get mud and water out of garages after a freak storm cell hammered north San Bernardino with 2 inches of rain Friday night.
The rest of the San Bernardino Valley got either no rain or small amounts, officials said.
At least 18 houses suffered flood damage when the powerful cloudburst cut loose about 10:30 p.m. Friday, said Tom Rubio, spokesman for the San Bernardino Fire Department.
One man was rescued from the top of his car as water rushed over the hood. A fire crew drove its truck into the torrent to pluck him off, Rubio said.
Another car loaded with teenagers was pushed down a wash near Kendall Drive, but apparently everyone got out OK, he said.
The city’s emergency operations center was activated and the swift-water rescue team was ready to move.
There were no reports of injuries, which was surprising given how high the water rose and how fast it moved.
“We are very grateful no one was injured or killed,” Rubio said.
One woman, married just last week, arrived home late Saturday morning and burst into tears when she saw her house on Pershing Avenue.
“It’s terrible! My god, my house is all flooded,” she cried.
Her garage door bulged out several feet, and her washing machine lay on its side on the other side of the street after being blown out of the garage by the rushing water.
Her neighbor across the street, Bryan James, 37, said one family was trying to evacuate, but the water was too deep and too fast.
He pointed to his large, four-wheel-drive pickup and said the water was well over the tires of his truck - nearly 3 feet deep.
“I couldn’t have gotten across the street if I wanted to,” he said.
Rubio said the Fire Department got reports of water up to 4 feet deep rushing down Mountain View Avenue and Sierra Way, in addition to the flooding at Electric and Pershing avenues.
Many of the residents have lived in the neighborhood for decades, and they said nothing like Friday night’s flood had ever happened before.
They weathered without any problems the Panorama Fire of 1980, the Old Fire in 2003, and the Christmas flood two months later that killed 14 people in Waterman Canyon and two people in Devore.
Many wondered if the new homes being erected higher on the slopes in north San Bernardino may have contributed to the flood.
Farther up the hill and a little to the west, Bea Coleman, 57, was helping her daughter on North F Street, north of 54th Street, clean up after her home was flooded.
“As soon as it rains, mud comes down the street,” she said. “They didn’t fix this when they built these new houses. This is worse since they built these houses up here.”
Jim Morris, Mayor Pat Morris’ son and chief of staff, said the city is still assessing the damage.
He couldn’t say Saturday if the city will be able to provide any financial help to those who were hit.
It didn’t appear there were any obvious engineering problems that exacerbated the situation, he said.
“It was just a freakish amount of water in a very short time,” he said.
Back down on Electric Avenue, a skiploader scooped bucket after bucket of dirt off the road and dumped it on the side.
Elias Shehab, maintenance supervisor for the city Public Services Department, was directing traffic around the skiploader.
“After any burn season we get a lot of run-off,” he said.
Hope Molina, 37, has lived on Pershing Avenue her entire life.
“We never had anything like this,” she said, standing in a muddy backyard watching the skiploader work on Electric Avenue.
One of her daughters, 12-year-old Reyna Enriquez, was the first to notice that something was terribly wrong.
“I thought it was an ocean,” she said.
Her older sister’s room is at a lower elevation and was flooded with about a foot of water.
On Saturday, her 5-year-old sister, Sophia Enriquez, happily splashed in the backyard puddles and slid on the layer of mud on the patio.
Next door, a block wall on two sides of the backyard had been knocked down by the force of the water.
Antonio Rivera, 32, had family and friends shoveling mud out of his garage across the street.
Lying in his backyard were several trash cans and toys that had washed into it, and his dog was missing.
“It happened so quick,” he said.
Because his house is raised off the foundation, he barely missed getting water inside, he said.
At the north end of Electric Avenue, water undermined the side of the road, cutting a gully - 8 feet wide, about 75 feet long and 4 feet deep - into which large slabs of asphalt tilted.
At Mayfield Avenue and Hill Drive, where a concrete apron directs water into a wide dirt area, water cut a 15-foot-deep gully.
On several lawns in north San Bernardino there were still intact patches of hail, some a few inches thick, Saturday afternoon.
On Pershing Avenue, William Holley managed to get one of his two cars running, but the other one had water in its oil.
Blankets were draped over his fence to dry after he used them in a failed attempt to keep the water out of the house.
“The garage is thrashed. The carpets are thrashed,” he said.
The bottom part of his metal garage door was caved in.
“When it started coming up, it was up to here,” he said, pointing to the side of the house about two feet above the ground.
“Horrible,” said Lynn Holley, his wife. “Muddy, squishy water everywhere.”