By Xinhua
Los Angeles : California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency in the storm-hit areas of the state.
The proclamation of the emergency Saturday would allow the Office of Emergency Services (OES) to deploy additional personnel, equipment and facilities in the affected areas for carrying out rescue operations.
Since Jan 3, strong winds and heavy storms have hit Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and other parts of the state.
“It is anticipated that as the storms continue to progress through the state and damage from the storm is analysed, more counties will declare local emergencies,” the governor said in a statement.
He said he has directed state agencies to utilise all their personnel, equipment and facilities to assist the local government in the mitigation measures.
In the past two days, the storms have left more than one million households without power, grounded flights and overturned trucks as wind gusted to 80 km per hour. The storms have sent trees crashing onto houses, cars and roads.
Around 15,000 households in the Los Angeles area were without power Saturday. The officials have been working around the clock to restore the services. Most of the outages were due to downed power lines.
In northern California, nearly 64 km of power lines and 105 power poles were damaged Friday.
Flash flood warnings came into effect Saturday in southern California, many parts of Los Angeles County and southeastern Santa Barbara County.
California has opened emergency operations centre to coordinate storm responses.