The discovery Tuesday of a woman dead beneath a fallen tree in her Sacramento County backyard brought the death toll for California’s recent series of storms to at least nine.
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The body of the 63-year-old Fair Oaks woman was discovered after her employer requested a welfare check because she hadn’t shown up at work, the Sacramento County sheriff’s office said.
She was the fourth Northern California resident known to have been killed by a falling tree during the storms that started Jan. 31, the state’s Office of Emergency Services said.
The Los Angeles Times quoted the emergency agency’s Brian Ferguson as saying there were nine storm-related deaths as of Tuesday:
• The four killed by falling trees.
• Three who died in car wrecks. Ferguson identified one of those as Feb. 1 in San Mateo County, but gave no specifics of two he said were in Southern California. According to news reports, fatal crashes in Yucaipa and Moreno Valley were apparently related to the storm.
• A man who drowned in the Tijuana River in San Diego.
• A patient in a hospice in San Luis Obispo County. Ferguson did not indicate how the death was storm-related.
In addition, a crash Tuesday afternoon near San Juan Bautista killed a passenger, a Castroville woman. The driver told the California Highway Patrol that he lost control after hitting standing water on Highway 156.
The map above shows the approximate locations of the fatalities noted by Ferguson; he did not specify that the Southern California car crashes were those in Yucaipa and Moreno Valley.
1/ Falling tree, Boulder Creek. Robert Brainard III, 45, was killed when a tree fell at about 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 4, on a home near Highway 9 and Bear Creek Road. Another resident was able to escape.
2/ Falling tree, Yuba City. David Gomes, 82, was found dead outside his home around 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 4. A neighbor had last seen him around 3 p.m. and the large redwood was thought to have fallen around 5 p.m. Gomes may have been on a ladder trying to shore up the tree next to his house, investigators said.
3/ Falling tree, Carmichael. Chad Ensey, 41, was struck by a falling cypress at his home on Sunday, Feb. 4.
4/ Falling tree, Fair Oaks (no precise location given). A 63-year-old woman was found dead in her backyard on Tuesday, Feb. 6, after she failed to show up to work.
5/ Car crash, San Mateo County. A passenger was killed in a single-car crash around 6:40 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 1, on northbound Interstate 280 near the Trousdale exit. At the time, the CHP said it was uncertain if the crash was weather-related, but the OES’s Ferguson included it in the storm toll.
6/ Car crash into water, Yucaipa. A 69-year-old San Bernardino man died after his pickup truck veered off Interstate 10 and into a water-filled ditch around 2:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 5.
7/ Car crash into water, Moreno Valley. A three-car collision around 10:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 5, sent a pickup truck into a flood-control channel, and its driver — Isaac Piza, 25, of San Bernardino — was found dead after being swept 6 miles downstream. A driver of another car died at the scene, and three people were injured.
8/ Drowning, San Diego. An unidentified man seen face down in the Tijuana River was pulled out by rescue crews around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 6. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The San Diego Fire Department said the county medical examiner would determine the cause of death and whether it was storm-related.
9/ San Luis Obispo County (no precise location given). The OES’s Ferguson gave no details beyond saying the death of a 90-year-old hospice patient was considered storm-related.
