LOS ANGELES—A section of Southern California found itself waist-deep in mud as the weekend arrived, and a highway overtaken by flowing debris looked like a buried junkyard of hundreds of cars that would likely take days to dig up.
The worst of the thunderstorms had passed, but the continued chance of rain could dampen cleanup and relief efforts in northern Los Angeles County’s Antelope Valley, where the most serious slides occurred.
On Friday, rescuers and those stranded in the highway debris flow described a chaotic scene that somehow left no reported injuries or deaths.
“It was terrifying,” 51-year-old Rhonda Flores of Bakersfield told The Associated Press. “It was a raging river of mud. I’ve never experienced anything like it, ever.”
Rescuers threw ladders and tarps across mud up to 6 feet deep to help the hundreds of trapped people from cars that got caught in the roiling river of mud along State Route 58 about 30 miles east of Bakersfield, a major trucking route, California Highway Patrol officials said.
They were rescued in darkness about 10 hours after the storm hit and taken to three shelters.
Flores said she, her mother and her stepfather were driving back to Bakersfield from her sister’s funeral in Utah when the storm hit out of nowhere.
Sgt. Mario Lopez, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, was at the scene as people were being rescued and said it was sheer chaos.
