Agencies respond to storm

Oct. 26—Sunday's atmospheric river caused approximately 5,600 Yuba-Sutter customers to lose power, according to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Spokesperson Paul Moreno.

"Crews worked hard to repair downed power lines, replace poles, wooden cross arms on poles and other damage and as of Monday afternoon all but about 14 customers have been restored," Moreno said in an email Monday. "We expect to restore those by tonight (Monday)."

Moreno said the outages were caused by fallen trees hitting power lines and poles and broken branches blowing into power lines. Some outage causes were undetermined so he said it's possible that whatever interfered in those cases such as an airborne tree branch later fell away.

The National Weather Service Sacramento provided 72-hour precipitation reports at around 11 a.m. Monday. The Pleasant Grove area in Sutter County received 4.57 inches. Marysville received 7.16 inches, Wheatland 6.48 inches and Beale Air Force Base 5.34 inches.

Marysville City Manager Jim Schaad said the storm taxed the city's drain system and public works crews. He said stormwater basins and Ellis Lake were quite full, which caused pumping stations to run continuously to move water to outside the levees.

"We did have some localized street flooding, primarily in East Marysville, and primarily due to clogged storm drains, which public works staff worked continuously to address," Schaad said in an email. "We also provided sandbags to some residents where storm water was rising to the level it threatened to enter their homes, but I am unaware of any residences that actually experienced flooding."

Rain and wind caused downed trees and branches which staff worked to remove. Schaad said Monday that the city worked to clean up residual items after the weather cleared.

Marysville Fire Chief Ron Karlen said other than providing sandbags it was a quiet day for the department on Sunday.

Reclamation District 1000 said its team will remain on high alert for the coming weeks to prevent flooding and ensure the Natomas Levee and drainage systems are operating efficiently and reliably. The district will pump rainfall and runoff from the Natomas Basin through a large network of drainage channels and pumping plants into the Sacramento River. There are eight pumping stations throughout the district, which protect about 55,000 acres in Sacramento and Sutter counties, according to a news release.

Sutter County did not report any significant damage and recently installed new storm drain pumps for the Daphne Lane residential development in the northwest corner of Bogue Road and Township Road, which worked well, according to county public information officer Chuck Smith.

"While there was water in some front yards, our series of ditches and pumps kept any significant flooding from being observed," Smith said in an email. "We're expecting the delayed storm flows from Placer County into south Sutter County today (Monday) with localized road flooding in all the normal spots."

Yuba City Battalion Chief Mike LaBlue said crews responded to multiple calls for service throughout the day Sunday. Calls included accidents, downed power lines and downed trees. He said one of the more significant calls was for a partial roof collapse at a commercial building in the area of Second Street and Bridge Street. Another major incident was a tree snapping a power line and landing on an unoccupied car.

LaBlue said there was some isolated flooding on Aylor Avenue but that all traffic accidents were minor and resulted in no injuries. Crews drove around Monday morning and did not see any residual effects from the storm.

Yuba-Sutter California Highway Patrol responded to 30 traffic accidents during the storm. Almost all of those had weather or road conditions as a factor, according to public information officer Brian Danielson. CHP responded to 35 calls for downed trees/utility poles, 13 flooded roadways. three closed roadways due to flooding, eight abandoned vehicles, and seven disabled motorists.

The most significant highway incident was flooding across northbound Highway 70 at Kempton Road where two hydroplane collisions occurred. Caltrans public information officer Raquel Borrayo said northbound lanes were closed at around 6 p.m. Sunday and reopened around 6 a.m. Monday. She said there was a lot of general roadway flooding in the area due to the storm.