As Hilary bore down on one Coachella Valley community, neighbors got to work

CATHEDRAL CITY, Calif. — As Tropical Storm Hilary pushed through Southern California, stunned residents of the Panorama neighborhood all seemed to have the same question: Who are all these people?

“We’re your neighbors,” resident Brett Anthony Vasquez recalled the people in his driveway answering.

He and others came together Sunday night as historic rain flooded the low desert to help strangers isolated in their homes, motorists stranded in cars and even a pedestrian immobilized by quicksand-like mud.

Some neighbors came from blocks away. Few were familiar faces. But they knew Avenida La Vista was hit hard, Vasquez said Tuesday as he surveyed streets that now looked like dirt roads.

A weather station in Cathedral Canyon, about 4 miles south of the Panorama neighborhood, recorded 3.61 inches of rain during the storm, more than the 3.23 inches in adjacent Palm Springs, which was enough to set a daily rainfall record.

Although the forecast called for catastrophic wind and rain, Hilary appeared to wreak much less havoc than expected in the Coachella Valley area, southeast of Los Angeles.

No deaths were reported, flooding damaged but did not destroy homes, and those who needed rescuing, including 58 people in Cathedral City, escaped major injuries, according to accounts from first responders across Southern California.

A woman was outside Vasquez’s home, standing still in mud 3 feet high for an hour as the storm raged, he said. He helped pull her to safety as others shoveled enough mud from his driveway and front yard that he could get in and out by car or by foot, said Vasquez, an Uber driver.

“Most of this was done by hand,” he said, pointing to his driveway and front yard. “Twelve people we’ve never seen before.”

Some of those stranded in vehicles had been diverted from nearby Interstate 10, washed out and filled with debris, and ended up on Avenida La Vista amid sticky waves of mud, neighbors said.

The street is where seven people were ultimately rescued from stuck vehicles Sunday night, Cathedral City Fire Chief Michael Contreras said Monday.

Around the corner, six residents of a senior care boarding facility unable to walk were rescued with the help of a bulldozer provided by the waste disposal firm Burrtec, the city said in a statement Tuesday.