National Weather Service officials had forecast up to 2 inches of rain and thunderstorms Saturday, which triggered public safety fears of similar short periods of intense rain that damaged 43 homes two weeks ago.
But severe weather never came, no damage was reported, and evacuation orders for nearly 200 homes in La Canada and La Crescenta were lifted 8 a.m. Saturday morning, officials said
“It certainly wasn’t the participation that was forecast,” said Bob Spencer, a spokesman with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works. “Those storms didn’t actualize. That’s the unpredictability of weather sometimes.”
Dump trucks continued hauling dirt and mud out of debris basins, and officials said many smaller basins were empty.
“We’ll continue with our efforts to clean out the remaining debris basins; those are mostly the bigger ones,” Spencer said.
Crews worked Friday to install 1-inch steel rebar to connect K-rails to the surface streets. Officials also implemented no-parking rules to prevent a repeat of the Feb. 6 storm, when 25 cars were swept down Ocean View Boulevard in a mudslide.
“When you live up here, you see stuff like this,” said Kathy Allen, who’s lived off Ocean View Boulevard for 47 years.
Public works officials said the damage from the Feb. 6 storm was caused in part by vehicles parked on the street during the storm.
“Once the vehicles began moving with the debris flow and crashed into each other and subsequently crashed into the K-rail, we believe it was the vehicles that dislodged sections of the K-rails,” Spencer said. “And the force of the debris flow is such that once the K-rail dislodges, it all goes.”
Allen lost a car to that storm, and several residents parked cars on their front lawns, Allen said.
A 10-foot section of K-rail weighs about two tons, Spencer said.
“They can take a tremendous force,” he said. “But it goes to show you the power of moving liquid. We’re confident that with these two new measures we’ve taken, we hopefully won’t see that in the future.”
Allen rattled off the names of neighbors of a few of the homes that were deemed uninhabitable after the Feb. 6 debris flow.
“I feel bad for my neighbors,” she said. “At least there was no loss of life.”
Get in touch MAX ZIMBERT covers education. He may be reached at (818) 637-3215 or by e-mail at max.zimbert@latimes.com.
