About 2,500 people were ordered to evacuate their homes in Southern California on Friday when a 106-foot high dam began leaking after two weeks of rain.

Officials declared a local emergency and issued flash flood warnings as they began releasing water from a reservoir at 10,000 cubic feet per second and worked to shore up the rupture in Prado Dam, near the city of Corona about 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

With water levels behind the dam some 22 feet above normal, residents of a small housing development, mobile home park, and campground were all ordered to leave their homes and offered shelter at a local high school.

Officials say recent rainstorms have cost the state more than 100 million in damage.

Though the furious winter storms that began pounding California in mid-December largely relented this week, the state was reeling from record levels of rainfall that triggered flash floods and mudslides, washed out roads and damaged homes.

North of Los Angeles, a hillside saturated by the rain collapsed on Monday, killing 10 people in the seaside community of La Conchita and leaving officials trying to decide if the area was safe to inhabit.

PHOTO CAPTION

Water pours out of Devil's Gate Dam into the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, Calif., Monday, Jan. 10, 2005. (AP)