California Mops Up From Storms; Snowmobilers Found
Date: 09-Jan-08
Country: US
Author: Dan Whitcomb
Lingering showers had emergency crews watching for flash floods and mudslides in areas burned during California's recent wildfires, and some 150,000 customers remained without power on Monday, but officials said the worst of the deluge had passed.
"We're still going to keep a watchful eye on those burn areas, but so far we've been pretty lucky," said Carol Singleton, a spokeswoman for the governor's Office of Emergency Services.
Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency for three Northern California counties due to power outages, road closures and damage to facilities. Several other counties have declared local emergencies.
Elsewhere in the West, six people who went missing in a blizzard while snowmobiling in south-central Colorado were found safe on Monday, huddled in a remote mountain train station at an elevation of 10,500 feet.
Barbara Smith, a spokeswoman for the Conejos County Sheriff's Department, said the group ran out of fuel on Friday evening and became disoriented, but took shelter in the station to wait out the storm and called for help on Monday morning.
Near Reno, Nevada, crews were working to drain a high desert town that was flooded after a canal levee broke, swamping an estimated 800 homes and forcing the evacuation of some 3,500 residents by helicopter and boat.
In Utah, eight people were killed in the crash of a charter bus on Sunday night, but police said it was not yet clear if weather contributed to the accident, the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper reported. The bus swerved off State Road 163, north of the Arizona border, during a light rain and plunged down a steep embankment.
With California entering the second year of a drought that has drained reservoirs and raised the specter of water shortages statewide, officials were cautiously optimistic that the snow dumped in mountain ranges would provide some relief.
Michael Miller, a spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources, said the storms had left snowpack levels above normal but if the rest of the year were dry the state would be left back where it started -- or worse.
"If we have one of those years where everything stops now, we're in a world of hurt," he said. "If it stops snowing now for the rest of the year, that would put us into the second year of a serious drought."
(Editing by Todd Eastham)
