LOS ANGELES, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- A California rescue worker was saved from surging currents in the Los Angeles River Friday amid a storm that has caused massive damage including mudslides, outages and flooding along the West Coast.
Video footage shows the rescue worker being carried down strong currents in the rain-flooded Los Angeles River as comrades run along shore, throwing a tow rope. After a failed first attempt, the rescue worker caught the rope and was pulled to shore.
The men were part of a Swift Water rescue team, a component of L.A. County Fire Rescue, which was in the process of saving a homeless man and his wife from the rain-swollen river when one of its own was pulled downstream.
Since Thursday when a subtropical system known as the Pineapple Express blew ashore, several homes were destroyed in mudslides, a small tornado touched down in South Los Angeles, nearly 70,000 residents of Southern California lost power and neighborhoods in Azusa, Glendora, Camarillo and Silverado Canyon were evacuated.
Bill Golubics, 77, lost his home in Camarillo Springs to an early-morning mudslide when a rapid rain storm erupted.
"I've never seen rain come down that hard for 30 minutes," he told the Los Angeles Times.
The rains, however -- from 3 to 14 inches in varying locations across Northern California -- have caused snow buildups in the Sierra Nevada and relief to California's drought-depleted water system.
California's Department of Water Resources recorded over 18 inches of rainfall at stations in the Northern Sierra just two months into the rain season, 45 percent over the seasonal average.
William Patzert, climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted how much of Southern California gets its water from the Sierra Nevada.
"The snow season for a change got off to a fast start," Patzert told the Los Angeles Times. "That's probably the biggest thing regarding drought relief."
Meanwhile, rising tides and coastal erosion have caused at least three vacation homes in Washington to fall off into the Pacific Ocean over the last week.
The homes were located in Washaway Beach, south of Westport, Wash., along Cape Shoalwater. The Washington State Department of Ecology notes that Cape Shoalwater features "the most rapid erosion on the U.S. Pacific Coast," averaging 100 feet of erosion per year for the past century.
