Storm Triggers Mudslides That Kill 2 in Tijuana

The last in a procession of violent, winter-like storms made a grand finale Wednesday, dousing an already soaked San Diego County with hail, snow and rain, and causing mudslides in Tijuana that killed two people.

By Wednesday evening, the storm had dropped 2.57 inches at Lindbergh Field since it hit Monday, making this month the second-wettest March on record, with a total of 6.96 inches of rain.

Forecasters predicted that the storm would move out Wednesday night, leaving the rest of the week dry and sunny, with slowly warming temperatures.

Mexican police said a mudslide at 6:15 a.m. collapsed the wall of a home and buried a 39-year-old woman and her 3-year-old son as they slept in Canon Johnson, near downtown Tijuana. The victims, both of whom died of asphyxiation at the scene, were identified as Maria del Socorro Varga de Castaneda and her son, Cristian.

Elsewhere in Tijuana, which was hard-hit by the storm, mudslides killed at least one other person Tuesday and forced the evacuation of scores of families from their homes. Meanwhile, the rains caused a rupture of a main aqueduct, cutting off running water supplies to about 400,000 residents in the western part of the city.

In San Diego’s Mission Valley, the swollen San Diego River coursed over seven roads in its path, from Fashion Valley Road to San Diego Mission Road, said Sgt. John Greenhalgh of the city lifeguard service River Rescue Team.

Frustrated drivers stopped at barricade after barricade trying to cross the river, finally getting on California 163 to get to the other side, Greenhalgh said.

At the international border, U.S. Border Patrol agents pulled a Yugoslav national out of the flooded Tijuana River as the man attempted to cross into the United States illegally, Border Patrol spokesman Robert Gomez said.

The man, whose name was not available, was spotted just after 6 a.m. struggling in the river channel and went under a couple of times, prompting the agents to jump in after him. His companion made it back to the river’s southern banks, authorities said.

Elsewhere, tornado-like winds hit a rural area of San Marcos about 2 a.m., uprooting trees, downing power lines and blowing apart an outhouse, a San Marcos Fire Department spokeswoman said.

Although the tornado was not sighted, the National Weather Service posted an hourlong tornado warning for ocean waters off North County.

Cold winds up to 40 m.p.h. swept through the county, downing power lines and blowing over trees and power poles.

More than 40,000 customers had their service interrupted by the high winds, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. spokesman Fred Vaughn said.

A man was injured when a tree fell on his car in Balboa Park Wednesday morning, San Diego police said. Kevin Black, 28, was in good condition at Mercy Hospital with a fractured vertebra after a 50-foot eucalyptus fell in high winds and crushed his car, trapping him inside, police spokesman Bill Robinson said.

Heavy, wet snow cut short a student outing on Palomar Mountain, which received 10 inches of new snow by Wednesday morning.

More than 250 sixth-grade students were evacuated in the morning, as workers cleared the roof of a student dormitory of snow, San Diego Unified School District spokeswoman Norma Trost said. A staff worker had noticed the previous evening that a beam holding up the roof was cracking.

Mudslides closed several highways in North County. California 76 in Pauma Valley was closed as of Wednesday evening, as was Del Dios Highway near Rancho Santa Fe, California Highway Patrol spokesman John Marinez said.

California 78 east of the Wild Animal Park was closed because of a cave-in, Marinez said. Chains were required in mountain roads in the county, and Sunrise Highway north of Interstate 8 was open to residents only.

The month’s storms have severely damaged the county’s strawberry crop, which brings in about $20 million annually, Bill Snodgrass of the county Department of Agriculture said.

The rains flooded strawberry fields, making the fruit hard to harvest and causing ripe berries to decay, Snodgrass said. Production has been halved in the past three weeks, and damage is estimated at $4 million.

Strawberries aren’t the only crop that has been damaged. Floods destroyed 10 acres of sod farms in the Tijuana River Valley, causing an estimated $300,000 damage, Snodgrass said.

The storms hit Tijuana particularly hard.

In a city where most streets are unpaved and neighborhoods extend haphazardly into canyons, hillsides and arroyos, the driving rains have caused mudslides that claimed at least three lives in recent days, authorities said.

Police said a 65-year-old man, Jose Hernandez, was killed Tuesday when a retaining wall constructed of earth and used tires collapsed on his residence in the Colonia Santa Fe.

Authorities have evacuated scores of families from their homes, and roads throughout the city of about 1 million inhabitants have been severely flooded or blocked by cascading walls of mud.

The heavy rains also caused a rupture in a main aqueduct, cutting water supplies to about 400,000 people in 3 dozen heavily populated neighborhoods in the western part of Tijuana, said Arturo Valencia, a spokesman for the Baja California State Public Service Commission in Tijuana.

The sprawling area will likely remain without running water for a week, until repairs are completed on a 30-meter section of the aqueduct, Valencia said. However, residents rely on separate deliveries of bottled water for drinking purposes, using the running water mostly for washing.

In two of the city’s steepest and most populated neighborhoods, Colonia Libertad and Colonia Buena Vista, police said 80 families had been evacuated from their homes and taken to emergency shelters in recent days.

The heavy rains have turned much of the city into a vehicular quagmire. Authorities say that chaos reigned at many major intersections, notably in the fast-growing southeastern part of town.

The rains in San Diego have made this March the second wettest since 1850, when the National Weather Service began keeping records. The wettest March on record was in 1867, whens 7.88 inches of rain were recorded, National Weather Service forecaster Wilbur Shigehara said.

“It’s amazing because we passed some extremely wet Marches,” Shigehara said.

This month pushed March, 1983, into third place. That year 6.57 inches of rain fell in March because of the El Nino current.

It appears that the series of storms has passed and the weather is returning to a pattern seen in January and February, which had very little rain, Shigehara said. A storm north of the Hawaiian Islands may bring a few clouds into the area by Sunday.

“It should be a nice Easter weekend,” Shigehara said.

Times staff writer Leslie Keesling contributed to this story.