Bridge destroyed by dangerous flooding in California

Storm chaser Reed Timmer was just outside of Banning, California, where a bridge has been destroyed by the dangerous flooding from Hilary on Aug. 21.

Transcript

00:00 To the north of Banning, this is the destroyed bridge.

00:03 That's right along the San Gorgonio River.

00:06 This is the big flood that came through here.

00:08 It's normally a dry wash with a little bit of flow down,

00:11 usually related to snowmelt.

00:13 But this bridge over Maez Canyon here, right into the road,

00:17 was taken out by a significant flood

00:20 that came down off the San Bernardino Mountains.

00:22 In fact, just about every single canyon and wash flooded significantly.

00:26 Out near Oak Glen, people are still trapped.

00:30 Down Potato Canyon, out there as well.

00:32 Down Birch Creek, there was a big flood.

00:34 Mill Creek as well, in the Forest Falls area, flooded significantly.

00:38 This one came through, initially about 600 CFS,

00:42 and then exploded up above 3,000 cubic feet per second.

00:45 And that's what took out the bridge.

00:47 You can see some debris along the edge as well.

00:49 There are a lot of residents that live over just on the other side of the river there

00:53 that are trapped and they are unable to cross.

00:56 And this was definitely a significant flood.

00:58 There's still some flow coming down.

01:00 You can see the erosion and many of the natural barriers that are in place here.

01:04 Those are the San Bernardino Mountains just above,

01:06 and they rocket all the way up to about 12,000 feet.

01:10 But there's a lot of damage around this area,

01:12 on the southern and eastern and northern slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains.

01:16 You can't even get to Palm Springs from the west along Interstate 10

01:19 because it's completely closed down as the Whitewater River overtopped it last night.

01:24 And that flow rocketed up above 20,000 cubic feet per second.

01:29 And that's why such a significant flood happened right down the interstate.

01:32 Motorists were trapped.

01:34 Has to be some terrorizing video coming out from there

01:37 as that mud overtopped I-10 and people were trapped in their vehicles with no escape route.

01:42 But this shows the power of water.

01:44 That's what's left of the bridge, and it expanded and eroded out the entire north side of the wash here.

01:50 And it definitely shows just how significant of a rainfall event this was.

01:54 It was a double-digit rainfall totals in the San Bernardino Mountains just above,

01:58 but the cleanup will likely take months to repair out here.

02:02 There's already been plans to rebuild this bridge,

02:04 and definitely a lot of destruction here across Southern California,

02:07 especially in the interior sections near the edges of the mountains.

02:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]