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The day after the big storm — life goes on in L.A.


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MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — The day after the biggest storm in years — and life went on in the Los Angeles area.

Folks in affected areas were busy cleaning up, returning home or even flocking to the beach.

"The storm of the century, and shorts and sunny the next day," joked Jay Berner from his bike. "That's California for you."

Berner drove about an hour from Corona to visit this ocean front suburb of Los Angeles, with 35,000 residents. He was joined by hundreds more cyclists, walkers and skateboarders out to enjoy a brief, dry respite from the pounding rain from the previous day. It was chilly, by California standards and the crashing waves were more active than usual, but that didn't stop anyone.

In Duarte, near Pasadena, some 200 residents had been evacuated the night before due to a massive landslide but were allowed back home the Saturday morning. The 1,400 cubic yards of mud were expected to be cleared by 4 p.m. PT.

"Life goes back to normal," said Karen Herrera, the deputy city manager for Duarte, a Los Angeles suburb with 22,000 residents.

The major freeways that had been closed due to the floods, including busy Interstate 5, which extends all the way to Washington state, were re-opened, but not all the lanes were open. And Amtrak was expected to resume train service between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo Saturday evening.

Problems still persisted. That sinkhole that almost swallowed two cars in the L.A. suburb of Studio City late Friday night was still wide open Saturday.  KABC7-TV reported that it would take several days to repair. A dorm at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, three hours up the coast, was evacuated Saturday due to instability of a nearby hill. Some 271 students were displaced, and moved to other campus housing, said spokesman Matt Lazier.

Meanwhile, at the beach, teacher Jody Nathan was on her bike, cruising the Strand, the 22-mile carless bikeway that extends from Torrance to Santa Monica, after a harrowing Friday.

"I work in Sun Valley, and all the streets were like rivers. It was crazy. It’s just 35 miles away, but it took me 2 hours and 45 minutes to get home," she said. "Today I saw a lot of debris on the road, and a lot of branches that have broken off."

But on the Strand, "there's no real problem here," she said.

Peter St. Fleur, visiting from Orlando, said the rain was so intense on Friday he "couldn't even go outside," so he was enjoying the beach life Saturday. "It's really nice here."

Abby Buoi, a visitor from Illinois, landed at Los Angeles International Airport at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, and got through the rain with no issues. "Everyone was making a big deal about it, but we didn't think it was bad at all. We're from Illinois. We have rain all the time."

Joey Reeves, another tourist, from South Bend, Ind., was more charitable. They have lots of rain back home, "but not all at once, like it was here yesterday."