Hundreds rescued from floodwaters in San Jose

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Rescuers chest-deep in water steered boats full of people, some with babies and pets, on Tuesday from a San Jose neighborhood inundated by water from an overflowing creek.

At least 225 residents were taken to dry land and rinsed with soap and water to prevent them from being sickened by floodwaters that had traveled through engine fuel, garbage and debris and over sewer lines, San Jose Fire Department Capt. Mitch Matlow said.

Residents went door-to-door searching for people who needed to leave the neighborhood. Only residents who could prove they had been cleaned of the floodwaters were allowed to board buses to shelters.

"This is like once-in-a-lifetime," said Bobby Lee, 15, of the water around him.

He was rescued with his brother and parents, who took clothes, electronics and some photos from their home in a neighborhood that ended up littered with submerged cars.

Earlier Tuesday, firefighters rescued five people stranded by flooding at a homeless camp along the same creek in San Jose.

Firefighters went door-to-door to tell residents to get out of their homes because the city does not have sirens or other emergency-warning systems, San Jose spokesman David Vossbrink said.

The rains were the latest produced by a series of storms generated by so-called atmospheric rivers that dump massive quantities of Pacific Ocean water on California after carrying it aloft from as far away as Hawaii.

The latest downpours swelled waterways to flood levels and left about half the state under flood, wind and snow advisories.

In another area of San Jose, the fire department was called to Coyote Creek amid reports of as many as 40 people being stranded at a homeless encampment.

That number turned out to be inaccurate; five people were found and rescued, fire Capt. Mitch Matlow said.

Their condition was not available.

In the Sierra Nevada mountain range, part of U.S. 50, one of the main routes to Lake Tahoe, was in danger of collapsing after a roadway shoulder gave way following heavy storms, leaving a hole about 40 feet long and 17 feet wide, Caltrans engineer Jarrett Woodruff said.

Crews opened one lane open Tuesday as Caltrans workers tried to fix the road failure after mudslides blocked it for days at a time in recent weeks.

Heavy storms over the last two weeks caused parts of the shoulder and part of one lane on the four-lane highway to give way.

In the San Joaquin Valley in California's agricultural heartland, farmers used their tractors and other heavy equipment to help shore up a breached levee along the San Joaquin River.

Some farmers arrived to fill a big breach within half an hour of noticing the break, said alfalfa farmer Tony Coit.

"The farmers ran it like a boss," he said, using soil from the levee itself to fill the 30-foot-wide break until they could bring big rocks for more substantial repairs.

The water level rose at Lake Oroville for the first time since authorities ordered an emergency evacuation of 188,000 people more than a week ago after a damaged spillway caused major flooding concerns.

The rains have saturated the once-drought stricken region and wreaked havoc for residents hit hard by the storms. At least four people have died in the storms throughout the state in the last week.

A motorist in Northern California was swept into a creek Saturday during another in the series of storms and drowned inside her car, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

Witnesses had seen the woman driving around signs blocking the road near Orland, Undersheriff Todd James of the Glenn County Sheriff's Office told the newspaper.

The current storm system began to weaken Tuesday after dumping more than a half-inch of rain in the San Joaquin Valley, over an inch in San Francisco, and more than 5 inches in the mountains above Big Sur over the previous 24 hours, the National Weather Service reported.

Dry weather was expected to return to the region today.