Emergency declared in S.F., 4 other counties

By Kevin Fagan
San Francisco Chronicle

Darlene Coelho had just gotten out of bed at 5 a.m. Thursday when she heard the awful sound she had been dreading all week, as rain pounded the cliff outside her precariously perched Pacifica apartment.

"It was this 'pow-pow-pow,' then 'crash!' and I dashed into the living room to have a look," said Coelho, 45. "And what I saw was this." She pointed out her back door to where a stub of what used to be her concrete patio stuck out sharply into the air.

A 60-foot chunk of soil, fencing and the patios of three apartments, including Coelho's, had plummeted into the churning ocean waves 85 feet below.

Coelho's first reaction?

"I started screaming," she said. "And then I went out and started pounding on everyone's door like Paul Revere, telling them to get out of their apartments."

Nothing more fell into the sea Thursday at the 320 Esplanade Avenue complex - but the threat of such an occurrence forced the evacuation of six of the building's 20 apartments.

The crumbling cliff in Pacifica was just one of a flurry of weather problems in the Bay Area on Thursday, as the fourth of this week's series of El Niño-driven storms tossed boats about like toys and hammered the region with stiff winds, power failures, traffic crashes, road closures and the kind of rain only a mushroom could love.

More than 23 sewage overflows fouled the region this week, said Sara Aminzadeh of San Francisco Baykeeper, causing the closure of five beaches in San Francisco, including Baker and Ocean.

Acting Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency Thursday in five California counties, including San Francisco, where the week's storms battered away the shoreline so badly officials had to close the Great Highway.

The declaration clears the way for state assistance in hard-hit areas. Brown is filling in for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is in Washington, D.C. No lieutenant governor has been confirmed since John Garamendi was elected to Congress in November.

The only good news out of the nearly incessant deluge this week was that a good dent was kicked into the state's three-year drought.

Thursday's rainfall, nearly an inch in San Francisco and well over an inch in many parts of the North Bay, brought the state's reservoir system up to 71 percent of its average to date - but more important, the additional 1 foot of snow piled the snowpack to 107 percent of its average to date.

For today, look for only showers and scattered thunderstorms, forecasters said. After that, little rain is expected until a weak storm Monday.

"The main heavy-rain-and-strong-winds part of the storm has passed," said Brian Tentinger, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

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