Sunshine Returns but Storm’s Effects Linger

As sunshine returned Saturday to San Diego and elsewhere in Southern California, the lingering effects of three days of windy rainstorms were evident in continuing scattered power outages, the presence of tree limbs, globs of mud and other debris along area roadways, and the abrupt transformation of normally quiet waterways into swollen torrents.

Early Saturday, firefighters, Border Patrol officers and San Diego lifeguards pulled almost a dozen undocumented immigrants from the surging waters of the Tijuana River, which is usually little more than a shallow ribbon of sewage.

The immigrants, among the hundreds who daily negotiate the Tijuana River Valley en route north, were ill-prepared for the chest-high waters just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Some had clung to branches for hours, authorities said.

Forecasters, predicting fair and somewhat warmer weather today, said that the last of the fronts that battered the area from Wednesday through Friday had passed. A weak storm passing to the north is expected to bring increasing clouds late today and through Monday, and there is the “potential” for additional precipitation later in the week, said Terry Schmeichel, a National Weather Service forecaster in San Diego.

March is usually the area’s second-wettest month, after January, the forecaster noted.

While the now-departed storm triggered electrical outages that affected more than 200,000 households and businesses in recent days, officials of San Diego Gas & Electric Co. said that all storm-related problems should be cleared up by today and full service should be restored.

As of late Saturday, about 4,000 customers remained without power, mostly in the Escondio and Pacific Beach areas, said SDG&E; spokeswoman Laura Farmer. The storm also interrupted telephone service for several thousand households, but a spokesman for Pacific Bell could not say how much service had been restored by Saturday.

The storm was blamed for scores of traffic mishaps in recent days, but authorities said that most were of the minor, fender-bender variety, although some victims were hospitalized.

From Camp Pendleton to Ensenada, residents, businesses and work crews were assessing the damage wrought by the storm and attempting to clear property and roadways of branches and other windblown debris. Sections of some small roads in the San Diego area remained inundated or otherwise impassable, but officials reported that most major roadways were in full operation.

Authorities in San Diego County and Tijuana confirmed two apparent storm-related deaths on Friday: Michael S. Reim, 28, who was struck and killed by a sign--evidently loosened by high winds--on an Oceanside street; and Raymundo Rojas Espinoza, 20, who was buried in his Tijuana home when a retaining wall, weakened by the rain, collapsed on his residence, killing him and injuring three others.

There were reports of several other storm-related fatal accidents in Tijuana, but Jorge Palacios, a municipal police official, said that only the one death was confirmed.

South of the border, where many homes are makeshift dwellings of scrap material perched precariously in canyons and on hillsides, heavy rains can often have tragic consequences, washing away homes and roads and transforming neighborhoods into quagmires.

In recent days, rescuers evacuated almost 100 households in Tijuana and treated almost 90 storm-related victims, including many cases of hypothermia suffered by children and others exposed to the chilly rain, according to Mario Rodriguez, lieutenant commander of the Grupo Rescate Halcones, a volunteer rescue team that responds to emergencies in Tijuana.

“Everything is getting back to normal today,” Rodriguez said on Saturday, adding that many families were returning to their flood-damaged homes, planning to rebuild.

Throughout the San Diego area, work crews attempted to clean up the litter left behind by three days of storms, which dumped some 3 1/3 inches of rain downtown. That was almost an inch more than the region had received in the eight months since July 1.

Some backcountry areas were deluged: Julian recorded more than 12 inches of precipitation during the three-day period, while Alpine received almost 8 inches and Palomar Moutain was doused with almost 12 inches.

As the milder weather took hold, lifeguards expected that Sunday would bring a reduction of the surf that has battered the Ocean Beach Pier and other coastline areas in recent days, although a heavy surf advisory remained in effect through Saturday evening.