Weather 
WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. () — The Wrightwood community saw major damage due to the Christmas Eve storm, leaving at least one vehicle completely submerged in mud in the mountainside community.
Eyewitness News spoke with two residents who live on the corner of Pine Street and Oriole Road, who said they had plans to visit family in Barstow on Wednesday, but that quickly changed.
“At first it was something I’ve seen before… just a little bit of flooding on the street, nothing, like, too alarming, but by the hour, it got very alarming, very fast,” said Kaitlyn Johnson.
She said the river of water flowing outside of her home “tripled in size” as the day went on. Then, the water flow broke through a fence and began flooding her home.
“It’s crazy,” she said. “I mean, I definitely think we got lucky, for sure, because some of our neighbors are in a very tough spot right now.”
The areas near Pine Street and Oriole Road are buried under feet of mud.
“This house is our safe gate. This white house. So we came over there and helped that neighbor do everything he could to help his yard, because his yard is our lifeline. Then we lost his yard, and this whole river split like 10 feet, and it finally waterfalled into our backyard. Our shed is full of mud, halfway up and up to our door handle has mud,” a neighbor told Eyewitness News.
A shelter-in-place order issued for the community of Wrightwood was changed to an evacuation warning on Thursday afternoon, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department announced.
“There is still a potential for mud and debris flows from an approaching storm that may affect your area,” read a post on the department’s X account.
The community of Lytle Creek is also under an evacuation warning.
Residents are being asked to use this evacuation map to track down all the areas that have been impacted.
Residents are encouraged to sign up for the Telephone Emergency Notification System (TENS) and visit http://prepare.sbcounty.gov for any incident updates.
San Bernardino County fire crews went door-to-door, checking on residents and urging some of them to evacuate immediately.
An evacuation center has been set up at the Victorville Fairgrounds for anyone who needs a place to go.
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