What happened over the January weekend when heavy rain brought flood advisories, mudslide danger

While the majority of the most severe flash flood and debris flow warnings expired by Monday morning across Los Angeles County, officials said a chance for thunderstorms remained high through 10 a.m., which could bring brief but heavy downpours of rain and small hail.

The Hughes burn scar, including Santa Clarita, Acton and Lake Castaic, remained under a flood watch until mid-morning Monday as the cold, wet system continued to move through the region. The possibility for isolated showers will remain across the L.A. Basin into Tuesday.

Rain totals as of early Monday showed that much of the region received significant rainfall, though amounts were still quite variable. Parts of Los Angeles received more than an inch and a half as of 4 a.m. Monday, while other areas saw less than half an inch.

Porter Ranch had recorded the highest confirmed two-day rain total in L.A. County, according to the National Weather Service, with 1.62 inches, while Castaic had just clocked in 0.28 of an inch. Many totals across the Southland had increased considerably from Sunday night, as rain continued overnight.

Here are a few other rain totals for the region, as of 4 a.m. Monday.

Metropolitan L.A.

• Santa Monica Pier: 1.38 inches
• Bel Air: 0.93
• Culver City: 1.05
• Beverly Hills: 1.02
• Hollywood Reservoir: 0.87
• Downtown L.A.: 0.54

Valleys

• Northridge: 1.36
• Agoura Hills: 1.15 inches
• Canoga Park: 1.10
• Sepulveda Canyon: 0.89
• Hansen Dam: 0.98
• La Canada Flintridge: 0.57
• Eagle Rock Reservoir: 0.59
• Mt. Olive High School: 0.26
• Alhambra: 0.48
• Claremont: 0.72
• Newhall: 0.75

Residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires can now sign up for debris removal on Los Angeles County’s recovery website.

The government is coordinating the cleanup in two phases. Phase 1 was launched by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday. It’s free for residents and does not require homeowners to sign up.

The Grapevine section of Interstate 5 was closed in both directions early Monday morning due to snow.

The closure took effect late Sunday night and persisted after midnight Monday. It was unclear when the Grapevine — which includes the Tejon Pass — would reopen, the California Department of Transportation said. The agency suggested using U.S. 101 as an alternate route between Los Angeles County and Central California.

“Crews working to clear snow,” Caltrans said.

“The closure will be in place for an unknown duration,” the California Highway Patrol said.

Caltrans also said a section of eastbound California 138 — in Los Angeles County’s high desert — was experiencing white-out conditions due to heavy flurries. Caltrans said to avoid California 138 between the San Bernardino County line to the junction with California 18.

A flood advisory took effect for areas in and around Los Angeles County’s burned areas early Monday morning.

“Shallow debris flows consisting of mudslides and rockslides possible,” the weather service said of the areas affected by the flood advisories and that endured recent wildfires.

Minor flooding in low-lying areas is also expected elsewhere.

Flood advisories were in effect for the following regions:

• The foothills of the San Gabriel Valley, including the southern areas of the Eaton burn scar, such as Altadena and Pasadena; and the 210 freeway corridor, including Arcadia, Sierra Madre and Glendale.

• The Palisades burn scar, which includes the areas around Pacific Palisades and Malibu, and the far western San Fernando Valley.

• A wide swath of L.A. County, including the Los Angeles Basin, the San Gabriel Valley and Universal City.

A video offers new evidence suggesting the massive Eaton fire may have ignited at a Southern California Edison transmission tower just moments after flashes of blue and white light flared near the electrical equipment.

Over the last few weeks, residents who live near the tower have shared videos and photos of large flames at the base of the structure in Eaton Canyon just as the fire was getting started after 6 p.m. on Jan. 7.

Heavier rain has arrived in Southern California, and flood advisories were issued in parts of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

In Los Angeles County, the National Weather Service issued a flood advisory Sunday afternoon for a swath of Los Angeles, including the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, Griffith Park, and the Sepulveda Pass — the area of the 405 freeway between Bel Air and Brentwood.

This includes areas burned in the Hurst fire in the Sylmar area and the Sunset fire in the Hollywood area.

Peak rain rates of 0.3 to 0.4 of an inch per hour are likely in these parts of Los Angeles County, the weather service said. Impacts could include minor debris flow in recently burned areas and minor flooding in low-lying and poor drainage areas.

A flood advisory was also issued in western Ventura County Sunday afternoon, as well as a stretch of Santa Barbara County between Goleta and the El Capitan State Beach, which includes Isla Vista and Santa Barbara Airport.

A flood advisory is issued when a weather event is expected to become a nuisance. It’s a step above in severity from a flood watch, which means flooding is possible.

A flood watch took effect at 10 a.m. Sunday and will continue through 4 p.m. Monday for the burned areas of the Eaton fire in the Altadena and Pasadena areas; the Palisades and Franklin fires in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu areas; the Hughes fire around Lake Castaic; and the Bridge fire in San Gabriel Mountains west and southwest of Wrightwood.

Officials warned Sunday of an increasing risk for mudslides in Los Angeles County’s burn areas, with a 10% to 20% chance of significant flash flooding and debris flows capable of damaging roads and homes in and around areas devastated by wildfires.

“The highest risk for debris flows would be after 4 p.m. Sunday,” the weather service said.

She was sleek as night wind, painted red, with a peanut-butter interior, a tuned-port motor with a factory four-speed.

Oh, man, said Danny Robinson, the things that 1986 Corvette might have done. He had been working on her for a while, ordered an ignition switch and was awaiting registration. She was a wrench-turn away from being road ready, and Robinson, a well-known tinkerer on Harriet Street in Altadena, could imagine himself behind the wheel, racing beneath the evening crows that flew westward above the San Gabriels.

With more rain on the way, officials warned Sunday of an increasing risk of mudslides in Los Angeles County’s burn areas, with a 10% to 20% chance of significant flash flooding and debris flows capable of damaging roads and homes in and around areas devastated by wildfires.

“This is the worst-case scenario to prepare for,” said Kristan Lund, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

With residents anxious to return to their fire-ravaged properties, authorities are warning of the dangers of sifting through the toxic wreckage — especially without protective gear.

Hazardous items in the fire zones can include batteries, ammunition, propane tanks, pesticides, and cleaning products that can become unsafe when exposed to heat and fire. Harmful chemicals can be present in the ash in charred neighborhoods, according to experts.

×

On the night of January 7, the Eaton fire began, and grew. As it closed in on Two Palms Care Center in Altadena, employees grew concerned they’d have to evacuate the 45 patients. That night, the fire grew close and multiple employees drove to the facility to rescue the 45 patients. This is their story on how they did it.

As raging wildfires continue to torment Southern California, estimates of the total economic loss have ballooned to more than $250 billion, making it one of the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history.

Early estimates by AccuWeather and JP Morgan put the damage in the $50-billion range, but the expected toll quickly rose to more than triple that amount as fires spread through neighborhoods in Altadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

With containment of the Palisades and Eaton fires improving, some residents are now returning to their neighborhoods to sift through the rubble. But the thousands of victims whose homes or businesses have burned down or been damaged are now facing a thicket of post-fire paperwork.

That may include navigating confusing web portals, frustrating phone-tree systems and other soul-crushing bureaucracy. Some will have to file insurance claims and possibly submit an itemized inventory of every object that was in their house. Others will have to register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and apply for housing assistance grants, while others may have to apply for loans to fill insurance gaps or GoFundMe assistance. Amid all that accounting, there will be new mortgages, rental agreements or other temporary housing paperwork.

The worst of the first significant rainstorm of the season for Southern California is expected to hit Sunday and Monday. Here is what you need to know:

Timing

The Palisades fire, which has burned 23,448 acres, was 87% contained as of Sunday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The Eaton fire, which has charred 14,021 acres, was 95% contained.

The Hughes fire, which has burned 10,425 acres, was 90% contained; and the Laguna fire, which has burned 83 acres, was 98% contained.

After flames leveled nearly 500 homes in Bel-Air and Brentwood in 1961, Los Angeles had a reckoning over firefighting.

By 1964, city leaders had added 13 fire stations, mapped out fire hydrants, purchased helicopters and dispatched more crews to the Santa Monica Mountains. To accommodate growth in Pacific Palisades, they built a reservoir in Santa Ynez Canyon, as well as a pumping station “to increase fire protection,” as the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s then-chief water engineer, Gerald W. Jones, told The Times in 1972.

As devastating wildfires blaze through multiple pockets of L.A., they continue to take a toll on residents from all walks of life — including comedians, whose job it is to make people laugh in these times of tragedy, even as some have also been evacuated or lost their homes.

Southern California native and longtime Malibu resident, podcaster and comedian Adam Carolla recently spoke with The Times about his experience evacuating from the fires, and how his condo miraculously survived. Carolla, who is constantly performing in L.A. and around the country, spoke about what he knows so far about the city of Malibu, his upcoming gigs — including the Comedy Fantasy Camp in Hollywood this weekend — and his opinions on jokes about the fires and other tragedies. He also talked about his decision to leave California due to state policies and taxes, and where he eventually plans to relocate.

SACRAMENTO —  Former Vice President Kamala Harris took a wise step toward potentially running for governor in her first action after returning to California.

She visited wildfire victims, volunteers and firefighters in Altadena and helped distribute free meals to people burned out of their homes.

Trump said he was stunned by the devastation in L.A. and vowed to work with local officials to rebuild and help victims.

“We have to work together to get this really worked out,” Trump said. “I don’t think you can realize how...devastating it is until you see it.”

My first news of the Palisades fire came from a message in my neighborhood WhatsApp group. I learned from my neighbors in Del Rey that a blaze had broken out in the hills — above the neighborhood I grew up in, where my parents still live in our family home on the edge of the Palisades.

My own neighborhood of Del Rey was likely out of harm’s way. Yet as we all learned how quickly the fire was spreading, the neighborhood WhatsApp transformed into a mini resource center, sharing tips for staying safe and volunteering spare bedrooms and ADUs. A call for available deep freezer storage for an evacuee’s breast milk was met with offer upon offer. Everyone made space.

Greg Bolin returned to his home in Paradise, Calif., to find his wife in tears. She had been watching news coverage of the firestorms in Los Angeles.

“It’s just exactly — these people, they’re lost. They don’t know where to go,” Bolin recalled her saying.

Hundreds of child-care providers affected by the L.A. fires have been forced to shut their facilities and dozens of sites were destroyed, leaving scores of working families scrambling for care and dealing a blow to an already fragile sector in the region.

As of Thursday, 37 child-care facilities were reported destroyed in the fires; 21 were child-care centers, and 16 were family child-care homes. An additional 284 were non-operational because of ash, debris, power outages or a lack of potable water, according the California Department of Social Services.

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. Here’s what you need to know to start your weekend:

Pacific Palisades resident Dave Harvilicz drove to the intersection of Brooktree Road and West Sunset Boulevard on Friday afternoon to catch a glimpse of President Trump’s arrival.

The intersection, blocked off by military humvees and local police, was roughly a mile from the remains of Harvilicz’s home on Mount Holyoke Avenue, one of hundreds destroyed by the Palisades fire.

Facing growing scrutiny over whether one of its transmission towers sparked the Eaton fire, Southern California Edison this week said that an encampment was found roughly 300 yards downhill from the tower in Eaton Canyon.

Edison did not directly link the camp to a possible cause of the fire, and attorneys who are suing the utility expressed deep skepticism that it was involved in the fire that burned more than 7,000 homes and killed 17 people.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it will open a new recovery center in Altadena for those who incurred damage from the Eaton fire.

The Altadena Disaster Recovery Center will open Monday at 540 W. Woodbury Road and will operate from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Representatives from state and federal agencies will be present to assist anyone who experienced damage to a primary home, personal property loss or other emergency related to the wildfires.

Juana Rodriguez, administrator of Two Palms Care Center in Altadena, had just arrived at her home in Riverside. She washed up, prepared to eat dinner with her family, and then got an urgent call from her on-duty nurse.

Fire was approaching the facility, home to 45 elderly and disabled patients ranging in age from mid-60s to 103, many of them bedridden, some with dementia.

A week before President Trump’s first inauguration, L.A. County leaders were entering the resistance era.

“Here is what I want all communities to know,” then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell told county supervisors in January 2017. “My deputies will not initiate any police activity nor arrest anyone based solely on their immigration status. It’s our promise.”

The risk of debris flow — a type of landslide that can cause severe damage — around recently burned areas in Los Angeles County is growing as this weekend’s rains approach.

There is now a 10% to 20% chance of significant debris flow for sensitive recently burned areas of L.A. County; that’s up from an earlier estimate of 5% to 10%. The chance of debris flows for other burn scars remains 5% to 10%.

President Trump surveyed destruction in Pacific Palisades on Friday, spoke with residents who had lost their homes and expressed shock at the level of devastation.

But across town in Altadena, some residents watching those sober scenes hoped the staggering losses in their own community would not be forgotten.

Areas recently burned by wildfires in Los Angeles County are at some risk for flooding and landslides as Southern California prepares this weekend for its first significant rain of the winter.

“The threat is high enough to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” the National Weather Service office in Oxnard said on social media.

Despite delivering blistering criticism of California leaders from afar, President Trump shared a warm embrace with Gov. Gavin Newsom and appeared to pledge his support to Los Angeles as he stepped onto state soil Friday for the first time in his second term.

The president said he appreciated Newsom — whom he often publicly derides as “Newscum” — greeting him on the tarmac and promised to help “fix” damages in the fire-ravaged state.

Three days after the Eaton fire devoured his Altadena home, Leo Bulgarini traveled through his leveled neighborhood, past scorched houses and gutted businesses, to check on his restaurant.

As he approached the corner of Altadena Drive and Lake Avenue, about a half-mile from his incinerated house, he immediately noticed charred rubble where the quirky Bunny Museum and Open Road Bicycle Shop once stood. It was less than a football field away from his restaurant and gelateria, Bulgarini Vino Cucina.

During a visit to Los Angeles burn areas Friday, President Trump sought to convince California officials that the state’s system of water management needs a dramatic overhaul.

Trump announced that he was set to approve an executive order “to open up the pumps and valves in the north.”

As firefighters start to get the upper hand on the Eaton and Palisades fires, the focus now shifts to clearing debris from the thousands of destroyed or heavily damaged homes, an effort complicated by hazardous materials and toxic ash.

The process began Friday when a small convoy with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveyed a swath of charred properties along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

President Trump walked through the ruins of Pacific Palisades on Friday, shaking hands with firefighters and speaking to a handful of residents as he took in the devastation brought by firestorms that swept through L.A. County this month.

Leveled properties and charred trees were visible in the background as the president walked through a neighborhood of leveled homes. Firefighters handed the president a white fire helmet adorned with the number 47 on the front and side.

In a somber scene lighted by an orange Los Angeles sunset, President Trump walked through the ruins of Pacific Palisades on Friday, shaking hands with firefighters and speaking to a handful of residents as he took in the devastation wrought by firestorms that swept through L.A. County this month.

Leveled properties and charred trees were visible in the background as the president walked through a neighborhood of destroyed homes. Firefighters handed him a white fire helmet with No. 47 on the front and side.

After an epic dry streak that helped fuel devastating fires, Southern California this weekend will get its first real rain of the winter.

Any moisture will help with the region’s parched, combustible landscape. Yet there is concern that the upcoming rain may provide only temporary relief. After this weekend, a dry spell could return — raising serious questions about whether dangerous fire weather could return sooner than later.

Los Angeles County officials missed dozens of opportunities for water infrastructure improvements that experts say probably would have enabled firefighters to save more homes during the Palisades fire, public records show.

As crews battled the blaze, attempting to extinguish flames that burned huge swaths of L.A. County and killed at least 11 people, some hydrants ran dry.

When the federal government in 2012 launched Wireless Emergency Alerts — a new system that allowed officials to send loud, screeching alarms to cellphones across a large area — many local emergency management officers were wary of the technology.

In 2017, as the Tubbs fire engulfed Northern California’s wine country, officials in Sonoma and Napa counties decided against sending such mass wireless alerts, worrying that they would cause county-wide gridlock and panic. Instead, they relied on an older system that sent messages to a smaller number of landlines and cellphone numbers voluntarily submitted by residents. Ultimately, 22 people perished.

Michael Gessl’s house survived the Palisades fire that destroyed much of his neighborhood, but something else is making him nervous.

Rain.

Some policyholders who lost their homes in the Los Angeles fires are not getting claims advances that are due to them, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara alleged Thursday.

In response, Lara issued a bulletin reminding all California insurers that the law requires victims who have suffered total losses to get advance payments for their living expenses and loss of contents.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Thursday that her brother was among the thousands of people who lost their homes in the Palisades fire.

“The loss that you’re going through, I share indirectly. It’s hit my family too,” Bass said at a meeting of the Pacific Palisades Community Council. “My brother, who has lived in Malibu for 40 years, been through many fires, evacuated many times — this time didn’t get away.”

Southern California’s fire season refuses to quit, even with rain on the horizon.

In the last day, hundreds of weary firefighters have battled multiple fires in the hills around Los Angeles and Ventura counties, including a massive blaze near Castaic, an early morning fire in the Sepulveda Pass that threatened Brentwood and Bel-Air, and another that pushed into Ventura County farmland Thursday morning.