Storm Rains Chaos on Roads, Air Travelers

Two people died on rain-slicked San Diego County roads as an Alaskan storm slowed freeway traffic, flooded streets and added to the woes of frustrated post-holiday airline travelers at Lindbergh Field Sunday.

Two men were killed and two were injured on Reche Road at Gird Road in Fallbrook in one of the accidents that kept California Highway Patrol officers scurrying throughout the day.

Driver Leo Bardo Lopez Cardona, 26, of Valley Center and passenger, Marcos Oviedo, of Fallbrook, died of injuries in the one-car accident. Deputy coroner Chuck Bolton said the car ran off the road into a drainage ditch when Cardona apparently lost control of the vehicle.

Two more passengers, who were not identified, were treated at Fallbrook Hospital.

By early Sunday evening, harried Highway Patrol officers had stopped responding to accidents in which no one was hurt.

“It’s been absolutely nuts,” said CHP spokeswoman Liz Hill. “We are going from one accident to the other, so we have no counts. We are not even taking non-injury accidents. Anybody who is not injured, we will send a tow truck, but they have to make a report at the office.”

Rain began falling at Lindbergh Field about 8 a.m. and continued throughout the day, pelting the region in heavy sheets at times.

By early evening, flooding closed nearly every road crossing the San Diego River bed in Mission Valley, including Fashion Valley Road, Texas Street and Mission Center Road, San Diego police spokesman Leon Pearce said.

Barricades were also set up at Rosecrans Street, at both Kurtz Street and at Midway Drive. Intersections were also closed at Mira Mesa and Parkdale Roads and at Pershing Drive and 26th Street.

In the county, roads were closed at the intersection of Quarry Road and Swap Meet Road in Bonita, and “at the dip” on Camino del Norte in Olivenhain, said county dispatcher Joe Brown.

San Diego Gas & Electric said the stormy weather could have been responsible for a power outage in University City, where 2,000 customers were without power from about 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., SDG&E; spokesman David Smith said.

Another outage extinguished street and traffic lights downtown. Smith said trouble crews had not found the source of the problem by 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

The power stopped about 5:45 p.m., and although some energy was rerouted from other areas, several streets were still dark, including parts of Martin Luther King Way, Broadway and 5th Avenue.

Weather forecasters said the moist, unstable air mass that came down from the Gulf of Alaska was expected to dump as much as 10 inches of snow in the mountains Sunday night and today, as the snow level dropped from 7,000 feet to 4,000 feet.

Chains were required above 5,000 feet at Palomar Mountain.

Forecasters predicted that the storm, which dropped eight-tenths of an inch of rain by 9 o’clock Sunday evening, would leave as much as an inch on the coast before moving east today. Mostly fair skies were forecast for Tuesday.

The rain contributed to delays faced by airline travelers trying to get into and out of San Diego on the last day of the post-holiday weekend. Traditionally, the weekend is one of the heaviest travel days of the year, airline officials said.

About 20% of Pacific Southwest Airline’s 46 flights were delayed 30 minutes, mostly because of prior holdups in Los Angeles and San Francisco, said ticket agent Phil Freedman.

Passengers reported being bumped off overbooked flights at other airlines and waiting for hours for delayed flights arriving from other cities. Baggage was removed from heavily-laden planes and placed on later flights, angering people waiting to get home.

“There’s heavy holiday traffic and a lot of bags. Nobody travels light anymore,” said Jerry Phillips, baggage services worker for PSA.

“You can’t print what I want to say,” said William Snyder of Coronado, who waited nearly three hours for a Continental Airlines flight from Denver. “I feel that anybody who travels on the last day of the holiday weekend is a jackass.”

But most of the delays and inconveniences were caused by the crush of people trying to use Lindbergh. California cool gave way to blaring automobile horns as cars ground to a halt outside the airport and in its parking lots. Traffic headed for the airport backed up onto Harbor Drive by mid-afternoon.

“San Diego’s gotten too big and the airport’s just gotten too small,” said Bruce Gunia, whose luggage was lost when he arrived in Pittsburgh last month and again when he returned home Sunday.

Phillips, the PSA baggage services worker, said he had taken 150 reports of lost luggage during the weekend at the airline’s counter in a maelstrom of travelers at the baggage claim area of the East Terminal.

“People are very rude. This is the worst job to have in the business,” Phillips said. “I’m not at fault, but people call you everything.”

“They don’t let you give them the business too much,” countered Celina Gonzales, who lost one bag on a flight down from San Jose for a sales meeting. “They act like it’s your fault. I’m frustrated. I don’t think I’ll fly PSA again.”