Crews manning a small armada of bulldozers and dump trucks have cleared most of the Southern California roads and highways blocked last week by mudslides unleashed by a freakish deluge.
Interstate 5, the state's principal north-south highway, was reopened first, on Friday afternoon, after workers freed hundreds of stranded vehicles on the Grapevine, in the Tehachapi Mountains between Los Angeles and Bakersfield.
Over the weekend, crews cleaned up blocked roads near the communities of Lake Hughes and Lake Elizabeth, in the hills northwest of the Antelope Valley city of Palmdale.