2nd Storm May Bring Slides, Flash Flooding

Southern California escaped with only minor problems as a moderately heavy rainstorm moved east Thursday, but forecasters warned that a “vigorous” new frontal system could bring mud slides and flash flooding in some areas today and tonight.

The National Weather Service said the second storm is expected to strike the coast head-on and have a stronger effect than the one that began Wednesday evening and dropped .93 of an inch of rain at the Los Angeles Civic Center and .82 of an inch at the Santa Ana Civic Center by Thursday afternoon.

Rainfall amounts from the new system could reach two to four inches in some coastal and lowland sections and from four to eight inches in some mountain areas, the weather service said. In the Los Angeles area, the total is expected to be one to two inches.

The brunt of the storm was expected to be in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties--which was bad news for residents of areas devastated by brush fires last summer. The weather service issued a flash-flood alert and a high-wind warning for western San Luis Obispo County.

With sea conditions “deteriorating rapidly,” gale warnings were posted.

Three men--two from Stanton--were pulled from the storm-tossed ocean off the Palos Verdes Peninsula by a Coast Guard helicopter Thursday morning when their 60-foot salvage vessel sank. The helicopter arrived at the point about five miles off Point Fermin in San Pedro just before the Double Eagle’s hull went down, Coast Guard Petty Officer James Chiunate said.

By the time the helicopter had circled the scene once, the stricken craft was gone, Chiunate said. The three crewmen were spotted in the water. Two of them were in a Styrofoam life raft and wearing life jackets while the third, who had no jacket, clung to the raft.

They were hauled aboard the helicopter and flown to Torrance Memorial Hospital, where they were pronounced in good condition and released.

They were identified as Thomas R. Carter and Gary Smithers, both 23 and from Stanton, and Harvey L. Hosler of Cudahy.

In Anaheim at about 7 p.m., a car rear-ended a truck and trailer rig on the Santa Ana Freeway near Brookhurst Street, killing one of the car’s occupants and severely injuring two others, the California Highway Patrol said. The truck driver escaped injury, officers said.

Elsewhere in Orange County, officials kept busy shoring up flood control channels and clearing debris from rivers and catch basins in case of a downpour Friday.

A 225-person crew from the county’s Environmental Management Agency spent the day inspecting channels and answering calls from residents, most of them concerning mud and debris clogging storm drains. Sandbags were piled in some traditional trouble spots, including the canyon areas and Orange Park Acres, said Bill Reiter, public works operations manager.

Most of the work to shore up Orange County’s flood control system was done by early afternoon, Reiter said. Bulldozers and other heavy equipment was used to cut channels for the runoff in the canyon areas, he said, and cranes were trucked to areas in the flood control channels where trash had accumulated. “You wouldn’t believe what we get,” he said. “People will throw just about anything in--bed frames, shopping carts, whatever, and it all backs up during storms.”

He said there is little threat of mud slides because the county has experienced sufficient rainfall this season and there have been no major fires in the last two years. “Our slopes are pretty well vegetated, so they’re holding up very well,” Reiter said.

While the inch that fell in coastal Orange County caused few problems besides the usual ration of fender-benders, stalled vehicles and traffic jams, officials said a heavy downpour Friday would cause more serious problems. “We’re casting a wary eye on that,” Reiter said.

Rain from Thursday’s storm totaled .80 of an inch in Costa Mesa, .31 in San Juan Capistrano and 1.20 at Santiago Peak, according to Emmett Franklin, the county’s supervising hydrographer. So far this year, rainfall has totaled 8.18 inches in Santa Ana, compared to 10.44 for the same period in 1985 and the average of 8.15.

“If we get another couple of inches tonight (Thursday), we will have some problems, some channel erosion and flooding of private property,” Franklin said. He said the last storm that caused serious problems struck on March 1, 1983, pelting the county with 4.37 inches in less than 24 hours.

“That’s the kind of storm you expect once every hundred years. It was that much of a freak event,” he said. That rainfall caused channels to break and flood property, mostly in central Orange County from Santa Ana to Huntington Beach.

Traffic jams were long and rush-hour accidents were about twice the usual number, a deputy said.

A semi-trailer truck overturned and spilled a load of cardboard boxes on the Knott Avenue on-ramp to the Riverside Freeway at about 6:50 a.m. when the driver apparently took the turn too fast, said California Department of Transportation spokeswoman Margie Tiritilli. Caltrans workers cleaned up the mess in a little more than two hours.

Police said accidents would have been worse if the rain hadn’t started shortly after midnight Wednesday. “By the time rush hour rolled around, most of the oil and grime had already been washed up,” said Anaheim Lt. James Thalman. “When the first rain hits at about 5:30 in the morning, that’s when we have problems.”

The only other reported problem was a transformer failure that blacked out about 2,000 customers of Southern California Edison Co. in Santa Ana in an area bounded by Bristol and Main streets and McFadden and Sunflower avenues. Half the homes and businesses had power restored by 8:25 a.m. and all but 10 by 11:55 a.m. Those 10 customers, all businesses in South Coast Village, where the transformer failure occurred, had their electricity back on by 3:16 p.m.

“We still have to take it apart to find out what happened, but I don’t think any water got in there,” said Edison spokesman Gene Carter.

In the Corona-Norco area, a Corona police car skidded into a pickup truck. “It was wet. . . . (The officer) tried to brake and just slid into him,” said Sgt. Rick Goldman.

Nearly a dozen cars were involved in a morning rush-hour accident on the southbound Harbor Freeway in Carson. Two people were taken to UCLA Harbor Medical Center, but neither was hurt seriously enough to be hospitalized.

In downtown Los Angeles, two Southern California Rapid Transit District buses, a semi-trailer truck and a small pickup truck collided at 7th and Mateo streets. None of the bus passengers were reported injured, but pickup truck driver Donald Groves of Anaheim was in stable condition at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center with a broken leg.

The intense new storm was generating large ocean swells expected to hit Southern California by this evening, producing breakers on west-facing beaches averaging 8 to 12 feet with occasional sets of 16 feet. But the weather service said high tides this weekend will average only about 4 feet, “minimizing the threat of serious coastal erosion or flooding.”

Nevertheless, the weather service issued a reminder that it is “extremely dangerous to fish or observe waves from exposed coastal structures or rocks during heavy surf conditions.” Swimming or surfing in such waves is also dangerous, the weather service pointed out.

Flash-flood watches were lifted temporarily in those areas of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties where last year’s brush fires made mud slides likely in hillside areas, but the watches were expected to be reimposed before this morning.

Ventura County Sheriff’s Lt. Ernie Rogers said, “We’re just waiting for the big one to hit.”

He said there was no major damage Thursday, when between two and four inches of rain fell in Ventura County, although Matilija Canyon Road was closed by a mud slide, as was California 33 north of Ojai between Fairview Road and the Ozena turnoff.

There was no evacuation ordered in Matilija Canyon, Rogers said, but many residents voluntarily left to stay with friends and relatives until the danger passes.

The weather service said only half an inch or less of rain was expected to fall in the Ojai area overnight Thursday but stressed that soil in the burn area is saturated and that even that amount will keep the ground wet.

Today, forecasters warned, “heavy rains will arrive which will have the potential for flash flooding and numerous rock and mud slides.”

Flash-flood watches were in effect along the Central California coast--especially in those areas of Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties where fires roared across thousands of acres of brush and timber last summer.

After Wednesday and Thursday’s rain, the weather service said, today’s storm “will likely give a good chance of additional flooding and slide problems. . . .”

Only minor mud slide and rock slide problems were reported in the canyon areas of Los Angeles County on Thursday.

There were some weather-related power outages Thursday, but the problem was not widespread, Edison and the Department of Water and Power said.

The .93 of an inch rainfall recorded Thursday brought the Los Angeles Civic Center total for the season to 7.24 inches as

of 4 p.m., nearly 4 inches below the total by this time last year. The normal total rainfall to date is 9.60.

Los Angeles International Airport had 1.32 inches by late Thursday afternoon. Avalon had 2.6, Culver City had 1.02, Long Beach had 1.22, Mt. Wilson had 1.55, Northridge had 1.1, Santa Barbara had 1.79, Torrance had 2.25 and Woodland Hills had 1.8.

Record amounts of rainfall were measured in the San Joaquin Valley, where Fresno had 1.61 inches--the most ever on a Feb. 12.

Thursday’s downtown high temperature was 59 degrees after an overnight low of 53. Relative humidity ranged from 90% to 80%.

Today, the Orange County and Los Angeles areas probably will have occasional rain or drizzle that by tonight will become heavy. On Saturday there will be morning showers, but they will probably give way to partly cloudy skies by afternoon.

Sunday and Monday are expected to be dry and a little warmer--but there may be some more rain by Tuesday, as at least one more front was reported forming north of Hawaii for a possible march toward the coast.

The current storms are relatively warm and wet, the weather service said, because they are not sliding down from the Gulf of Alaska.

These, the forecasters said, are “low-latitude” storms that can draw on subtropical moisture as they sweep eastward out of the Pacific. Consequently, snow does not fall in lower elevations and the rain can be in greater amounts.

With the major new storm moving in on California, there were warnings in effect for the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada from Kings Canyon northward today. Snow was expected above 6,000 to 8,000 feet and forecasters said it would be accompanied by high winds.

Some areas of the Sierra already had reported up to four feet of new snow by Thursday and accumulations of two feet or more are possible at higher elevations today.

Arizona also was anticipating a lot of rain from the “warm storm” and warned travelers to expect “a wet weekend.”