More than a dozen vehicles got an unwanted bath Friday when an underground garage in the Palms section of West Los Angeles was inundated with water two to three feet deep during heavy downpours.
According to reports from the scene, there were about two dozen vehicles in the flooded garage beneath a residential complex in the 3700 block of Kelton Avenue, near Venice Boulevard.
Firefighters called to the scene early Friday morning were using pumps to dewater the garage.
KNX News’ Jon Baird spoke with residents at the apartment complexes. Igor, an electrician, told Baird that his two work trucks and his personal car were stuck in the flood.
“I woke up because of the noise, and my neighbor knocked at the door, and I realized something [was] wrong, and I went down to check, and I saw the flood,” he said.
A woman who lives in the building also had her car stuck, but isn’t sure if her car received any damage.
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“People are reassuring me, but it's also…I'm pretty sure it got into my car with how deep it was,” she said.
Frank Parrott, who has lived on the block for than 50 years, said he’s never seen anything like this, but that he thinks he knows what happened that caused this.
“When there's heavy rain up in the hills up there, you get a flash flood down the streets, and if the storm drains are blocked up a little bit, they can't handle that sudden flood,” he said. “Once it crests across the middle of the street, it's going to flood these underground garages.”
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