7 Die in Storm; Orange County Pier Collapses

A fierce winter storm battered Southern California on Sunday, killing three in an avalanche that buried their car in the Angeles National Forest, and four more in a plane that crashed into a mountain in Newhall during a driving rainstorm.

High surf spawned by the storm tore off a chunk of the Huntington Beach Pier and forced the evacuation of more than 30 residents in a South Laguna beachfront community Sunday night, damaged oceanfront restaurants and a hotel in Redondo Beach, and threatened homes in Malibu and Hermosa Beach.

The storm pelted Orange County with as much as two inches of rain, causing road closures, highway flooding, mud slides and power outages, and triggering a small tornado that touched down in San Clemente.

The worst of the storm appeared to have hit early Sunday, when many Southland residents woke up to thunder and lightning storms that cut off electricity for brief periods to more than 45,000 Orange County homes and businesses.

But late Sunday night, devastating waves generated by the storm sent the last 100 feet of the Huntington Beach Pier crashing into the Pacific, carrying with it an unoccupied restaurant that had recently been rebuilt after the pier was destroyed during winter storms in 1983.

No injuries were reported when The End Cafe at the tip of the 1,800-foot pier collapsed into the ocean at 8:35 p.m. before a stunned crowd that had gathered to watch the pounding breakers.

“There was a large shuddering, a boom and then the whole thing collapsed,” said eyewitness Dave Schultze of Huntington Beach, who stood with about 30 other spectators at the opposite end of the pier. Huge chunks of debris were reported floating nearby.

“There was a shudder and like a slam dunk; the end of the pier and the cafe went crashing into the ocean,” said Dr. Max Benis, 61, of Huntington Beach. Benis said he was on the opposite end of the pier when a 30-foot wave crashed down over the pier’s end. “The lights were still on (in the restaurant) and then they went out. It was ghastly, like a box dropping into the water.”

Benis said the restaurant’s owner, fearing the worst, had taken out important records and equipment earlier in the day and was present when it collapsed into the ocean.

High waves battered homes in the Blue Lagoon area of South Laguna, and some flooding was reported in the Emerald Bay area north of Laguna Beach Sunday night, authorities said. In addition, Huntington Beach police ordered the closure at 9:45 p.m. of Pacific Coast Highway at the border between Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, where significant flooding was reported.

In Blue Lagoon, 16 of the 119 units of the exclusive oceanfront condominium complex were being battered by waves cresting to 30 feet, forcing the evacuation at 9:15 p.m. of 30 to 40 residents amid reports of heavy property damage from flooding, authorities said.

Resident Mike Colucci, 42, who was evacuated with his wife, Nancy, 32, said that when a huge wave washed in about 9 p.m., it “picked up this heavy Cadillac and smashed it into my Porsche.”

Cardon Walker, 28, said that he, his wife and two children heard a big wave hit and shatter the first-floor window of the unit next door. He said that he and his wife grabbed the patio furniture “before it went out to sea.”

Then, he said, “we just grabbed the kids and got out.” In the 12 years that his family has owned the oceanfront condo, Walker said, this is the worst he has seen.

“The waves are splashing over the roofs of the condos,” said Charles Peirce, manager of the complex.

No injuries were reported, but Orange County Fire Department officials and others would not allow residents back into their homes Sunday night. Those who had no friends or relatives nearby were to be put up in local motels, officials said.

Early Sunday, a small tornado touched down on a San Clemente baseball field, uprooting a 30-foot-long wooden dugout, carrying it about 150 yards and dropping it in the middle of Avenida Pico, near Interstate 5, about 9:45 a.m.

“People said it was just swirling through the air about 50 to 60 feet off the ground,” said San Clemente Police Sgt. Richard Downing.

And two Huntington Beach youngsters were rescued from the rain-swollen Santa Ana River channel at 12:30 p.m. Sunday after rising waters trapped them on a sand bar, Huntington Beach fire officials said. The boys, Andrew Bergsetter, 9, and Aaron Van Cleve, 11, were reported cold but otherwise unharmed (story in Part II, Page 1).

Even as the storm’s trailing edge continued to drop scattered showers, snow and sometimes hail as it moved across Orange County late Sunday, it prompted high surf warnings for possible flooding in low-lying coastal areas at high tide, at 7:52 a.m. today.

The storm was expected to pass through the area by early today. But behind it, colder temperatures and huge waves of 10 to 14 feet were expected, with occasional breakers of up to 18 feet that could cause flooding in low-lying coastal areas this morning.

The bodies of the three who died in the Angeles National Forest avalanche were discovered by accident while U.S. Forest Service rangers were rescuing two Boy Scout troops from campgrounds in the mountains, ranger Dean Weakman said. The rangers had gotten Caltrans to bring a snowblower in order “to clear the road and get the Boy Scouts out of there,” he said, when the snowblower uncovered the car at the intersection of Highway 30 and Angeles Crest Highway, about 13 miles north of Glendora.

“That’s the first we knew there had been an avalanche,” Weakman said, estimating that the snow had swept down from the nearby 7,800-foot Mt. Williamson.

The Boy Scout troops, from Culver City and Rancho Palos Verdes, were brought down to safety.

The four people whose single-engine plane crashed into a mountain in Newhall just before 1 a.m. Sunday during a driving rainstorm were two men and two women from the Los Angeles area, officials said, but they were not identified pending notification of relatives. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Detta Roberts said the pilot appeared to be following the Antelope Valley Freeway when he drifted off course in the fog and rain and crashed near the Newhall Refining Co.

The plane’s origin and destination were not known, she said.

As the day wore on, the damage, and danger to beachfront businesses and homes, became more extreme. In Malibu Sunday night, residents were evacuating from at least two apartment houses, on Malibu Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway, as the surf swept up against building walls. In the posh Malibu Colony, sheriff’s deputies were keeping a close watch as the waves broke windows and threatened, if the surf got higher, to swamp homes completely.

In Redondo Beach’s King Harbor, hotel guests and employees had to evacuate from the Portofino Hotel as the lower floors became flooded and people feared that the hotel itself was in danger of collapsing. A news helicopter transported people from the hotel roof.

Several nearby oceanfront restaurants had windows blown out and suffered water damage from the pounding surf.

In Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles County lifeguards gave out sandbags to beachfront residents as water swept across an oceanfront walk called The Strand.

Sunday had its share of dramatic rescues. Another troop of Whittier-based Boy Scouts was stranded beside the rain-swollen San Gabriel River in the Angeles National Forest north of Duarte. But the 13 boys and their three adult leaders were carried one by one across the water by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s San Dimas search-and-rescue team.

One Los Angeles County lifeguard braved 12-foot waves and churning currents to rescue a couple whose sailboat was stranded off Dockweiler Beach south of Marina del Rey. A lifeguard boat was towing the vessel when the towline snapped, the sailboat sank and the two sailors went into the water, senior ocean lifeguard Nick Steers said.

At that point, lifeguard Rex Goble dove off the lifeguards’ boat and, after 30 minutes of grueling effort in the storm-tossed water, brought the two victims to shore, Steers said, because the boat could not reach them through the waves. Both victims suffered from hypothermia and were taken to Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital.

In Huntington Beach, police had closed off the end of the pier when pounding surf widened the crack in an already cracked beam. The restaurant was closed as a precautionary measure around 10 a.m.

By nightfall, Chuck Phillips of Costa Mesa was among those in a crowd of “thrill seekers” that had gathered to see if the pier would buckle into the ocean. He said the waves kept coming up under the pier, pressuring it from below. “We could see they were getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” he said.

Just before it collapsed, one of the waves visibly raised the end of the pier.

“And then a big one came, like it was waiting for it, and took it right off,” Phillips said. “It was just like a basketball. It bounced up and down and it just disappeared. It looked like the wave just engulfed it.”

The restaurant “was last seen headed to Newport,” said Renee Field, a supervisor for the city lifeguards.

Other storm-related problems reported in Orange County included:

Off Huntington Beach, the Coast Guard towed to safety a sailboat that had lost its mast during the high winds and was left stranded a quarter mile offshore. Coast Guard officials feared that the boat would drift ashore and break up in the heavy surf.

Officials in Anaheim called for some 200 sandbags to shore up City Hall, where minor flooding was reported at ground level.

The storm had deposited 1.87 inches of rain in downtown Los Angeles by 9 p.m. Sunday, according to county flood control officials. National Weather Service meteorologists put the season total at 6.83 inches, just over the 6.32-inch norm for this time of year.

Other areas got more. In Orange County’s Silverado Canyon, 2 inches of rain fell between 7 and 11 a.m., Reiter said.

Contributing to this report were staff writers Steve Emmons, Lanie Jones, Jess Bravin, Carla Rivera and Kristina Lindgren in Orange County and Laurie Becklund and Nieson Himmel in Los Angeles.