LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rescuers threw ladders and tarps across mud up to 6 feet deep to help hundreds of trapped people from cars that got caught in a roiling river of mud along a major Southern California trucking route, a California Highway Patrol official said Friday in what he and other witnesses described as a chaotic scene.
Amazingly, officials said, no deaths or injuries were reported.
The people rescued from State Route 58, about 30 miles east of Bakersfield, were stranded in a powerful storm on Thursday evening. They were rescued in darkness about 10 hours after the storm hit and taken to three shelters.
"It was terrifying," 51-year-old Rhonda Flores of Bakersfield told The Associated Press on Friday. "It was a raging river of mud. I’ve never experienced anything like it, ever."
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.
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