Arctic Storm Snarls Traffic, Downs Lines

An Arctic storm system swept into Southern California on Friday, unleashing torrents of rain and high winds that toppled power poles, snarled evening commute traffic and generated heavy surf.

The California Highway Patrol reported more than 200 rain-related accidents on Los Angeles County roads, including an incident that snarled the westbound Ventura Freeway and backed up traffic onto the San Diego Freeway for about 20 miles.

Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol and Coast Guard officials said 15-foot waves knocked seven boats from their moorings, beaching the vessels.

No deaths were reported, but the storm left tens of thousands of homes and businesses throughout the region without power.

“We had what I would consider almost a hurricane situation,” said Sgt. Kevin Mauch of the Malibu sheriff’s station. “The rain was actually driven horizontally, the wind was so fierce.”

Gusts of wind up to 35 m.p.h. were clocked at Los Angeles International Airport and 31 m.p.h. in Long Beach.

In Orange County, thundershowers packing powerful winds caused dozens of accidents, includ ing a head-on collision that shut down a four-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.

Police in Westminster also reported that winds gusting up to 60 m.p.h. damaged 40 mobile homes about 7:45 p.m. Residents of the mobile home park in the 9700 block of Bolsa Avenue were evacuated as a precautionary measure.

At one point, the rain was falling at the rate of one inch an hour at John Wayne Airport. By 8 p.m., however, only .40 of an inch had fallen.

The winds and rain were dying down by 8 p.m. and power was largely restored to area homes.

Meteorologist Mike Smith of WeatherData, a private weather forecasting service, said the weather system should be in the deserts west of the Colorado River by this morning, bringing better weather to the Los Angeles Basin today.

Power Outages

Southern California Edison said that 35,000 customers--mostly in the South Bay cities of Long Beach, Torrance and El Segundo--encountered some power outages. The Department of Water and Power said that 15,500 homes throughout its service area in Los Angeles lost power because of downed lines.

The hardest-hit areas were Pacific Palisades, Beverly Hills, central Los Angeles, Highland Park, Mandeville Canyon, Wilmington and scattered San Fernando Valley areas in the northern part of the city.

The DWP said 28 crews were responding to downed wires, and all power should be restored by morning.

In Saugus, six inches of mud washed off hillsides onto some parts of San Francisquito Canyon Road, making the road impassable, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. Firefighters put a sand-bag dike around the rear of one home near one of the slide areas as a precaution.

An oil-carrying tanker truck overturned on the westbound Ventura Freeway near Kanan Road at 4:18 p.m., spilling diesel fuel on the rain-slick road and blocking four lanes of traffic. Traffic was backed up for 20 miles onto the northbound San Diego Freeway.

Charlene Baldwin, a spokeswoman for Pacific Telephone, said there were no widespread outages of phone lines in the Los Angeles area, but many individual homeowners had complained about lost service because of the rain.

Lines Get Cracks

“During the dry season the lines to homes sometimes get cracks in them, and when you have a big rain like this you get leaks into those lines, so some people are having problems,” she said.

WeatherData’s Smith said the fast-moving front brought particularly heavy rains from 5 to 7 p.m., when .64 of an inch of rain fell at Los Angeles International Airport.

In Long Beach, .74 of an inch fell by 7 p.m., nearly all of it in the previous three-hour period. At midevening, periodic thunderstorms were reported in the north ranges of Los Angeles and in western San Bernardino County.

Contributing to this article were Times staff writers Jill Stewart in Los Angeles, Steven R. Churm in Orange County and Michael Connelly in the San Fernando Valley.