One of the two deaths associated with the storm occurred in Placer County, located in Northern California, and the second in San Bernardino County, located in the southern portion of the state, spokesperson Shawn Boyd told AccuWeather.
A third person died on Friday in Oakland, California, when the roof at a commercial warehouse and distribution facility for Peet’s Coffee partially collapsed.Â
The cause of the collapse is currently being investigated to determine whether the heavy rain played a direct role, according to Michael Hunt, spokesperson for the Oakland Fire Department.
State and OSHA officials were on the scene Friday as a part of the investigation.
The man who was killed was a longtime employee of Peet’s Coffee, and he had been in the building with a woman who was taken to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. They were the only people in the building at the time, according to officials.
President Biden approved an emergency declaration for California due to the ongoing storms, meaning that the state will be able to access federal resources to deal with the flooding, landslides and severe weather from what will be the state’s 10th atmospheric river of the winter.
The flooding rainfall prompted flash flood emergencies in the Central California counties of Tulare and Kern — the first alerts of that kind in 2023.
Flash flood emergencies are rare alerts issued by the NWS to highlight a major threat to life or potential for catastrophic damage.
In the case of those issued on Friday, the first alert included the town of Springville, which sits about 67 miles southeast of Fresno, where rainfall combined with snowmelt.
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