Weather 
PIÑON HILLS, Calif. () — The aftermath of the holiday storm took a toll on the San Bernardino County area, including a man whose home was not just damaged, but deemed uninhabitable.
Neighbors and even complete strangers have been showing up with shovels, trying to save what little they can.
At Paul Prindle’s home in Pinon Hills, thick, heavy mud coats every room.
During last week’s holiday storm, a river of water and debris came rushing down the mountainside.
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Heavy rains sent a muddy river of water down the mountain, invading every room of one man’s home for more than 20 years.
“So all the water went pretty much right through his front door, washed four feet of mud in the house,” said Dylan Turkowski, a volunteer from Asparia.
Prindle has lived in the home for more than two decades. But this weekend, the home was condemned and deemed unsafe to live in.
Still, people keep showing up to help.
“We’ve just been here for the last two days now, digging, trying to get all the mud out that we could,” Turkowski said.
Most of the people at the home had a reason to help, like neighbors who’ve known Prindle for years and are trying to save what’s left of his home. But Turkowski is different.
“No, I don’t know Paul. To this day, I still haven’t met Paul,” he said.
Yet Turkowski was still there, leading an effort to help him.
“We had somewhere around 20 volunteers here yesterday, throughout the day, helping and digging out any personal belongings that were still salvageable, so that was a huge blessing and a huge help,” Turkowski said.
Prindle is recovering in the hospital from the flood. His brother said the road to recovery will be a long one.
“The stress of all this stuff has really gotten to him, pretty bad,” his brother, Steven Prindle, said. “He wasn’t able to eat for almost a day, so now he’s getting his appetite back up.”
For his neighbors, the night of the flood is still hard to put into words.
“I’d never seen anything like that before. I think the last time I was that scared, I was deployed. It was pretty wild,” said Robert Ramona.
But in the days since, that fear has turned into action.
“The people that were working, they were working so hard, and they were nonstop,” Steven Prindle said.
“We’re just constantly helping people, that’s what I think community should be about,” Turkowski said.
The family set up a GoFundMe to help support Prindle’s flood recovery.
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