Residents and officials were assessing the damage this morning after mudslides damaged 43 homes in the foothills hit by the Station fire.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was scheduled to tour the Ocean View Boulevard area this morning.
Most of the evacuations of residents were lifted, and most of the canyon roads closed by mud damage Saturday were now open.
The mudslides occurred during an intense storm early Saturday morning. The power of the debris flowing off the mountain pushed a 10-ton boulder into a crucial catch basin in La Cañada Flintridge.
The boulder clogged the drain like a giant stopper, and the ashen muck had nowhere to go but through the Paradise Valley neighborhood on the northern end of Ocean View Boulevard. Mud flowed two miles downhill, all the way to Foothill Boulevard.
"It looked like the Niagara Falls was coming down the street," said Amanda Manukian, who lives in the 5400 block of Ocean View Boulevard. She said she saw firefighters scramble out of her neighbor’s home when a burst of rainfall poured down, threatening the crew.
The mudflow twisted garage doors into dented accordions, disintegrated walls of sandbags and knocked over 4,000-pound concrete barriers that lined the road to divert water away from homes. About 25 vehicles were damaged, flowing down the street and smashing against walls, trees and one another.
Despite the damaging flows, there were no reports of deaths or serious injuries.
Read the full story here.
— Rong-Gong Lin II, Victoria Kim and Ruben Vives
FULL COVERAGE OF THE MUDSLIDES
— Times photo gallery from the scene
— Interactive map of evacuations by The Times’ Rong-Gong Lin II
— The latest rain news as it happens on L.A. Now
Photo credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times