2nd Storm Unleashes Mudslides, Accidents : Weather: An estimated one to three more inches of rain help make this the wettest December in five years. More is expected on New Year’s Day.

A second wintry storm packing forceful winds pelted Ventura County with heavy rain and snow Sunday, sending cars careening on drenched roads, flooding residential areas and sweeping a wall of mud into the yards of Thousand Oaks townhouses.

Heavy rains with intermittent downpours caved in the roof of a K mart storage room in Thousand Oaks and forced the temporary closure of an eight-mile stretch of California 126 after mud slid onto the highway and caused a three-car, non-injury accident.

The onslaught was expected to let up by today, but another storm is expected to arrive on New Year’s Day.

Weather forecasters estimated that between one and three inches of rain fell Sunday in various parts of the county, on top of an average of two inches that had accumulated earlier in the weekend. As much as two feet of snow fell in the mountains of Los Padres National Forest, said sheriff’s officials in the Lockwood Valley station.

“This is the wettest December in five years,” said Terry Schaeffer, an agricultural meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Santa Paula. “The creeks are starting to flow. This has been nothing but a plus for agriculture.”

Normally, he said, most areas in the county receive only a few inches of rain for the entire month. But Schaeffer cautioned that the drought--now in its fifth year--is far from over. “You don’t end a drought in a weekend,” he said. “We have a long way to go.”

The heavy rains started Friday evening and continued off and on throughout most of the weekend, causing a barrage of traffic accidents.

On Saturday evening a 59-year-old Oxnard man, Sook Suk Chung, was killed while riding in a car that crossed the double yellow line in a heavy downpour on Pleasant Valley Road and struck a Round Table Pizza delivery truck head-on.

The driver of the car, So Yul Chong, 50, of Oxnard, was booked into Ventura County Jail on suspicion of felony drunk driving and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

The driver of the delivery truck, David Hibbard, 26, of Port Hueneme, was treated at St. John’s Regional Medical Center for minor injuries and released.

Dispatchers at the Ventura County Fire Department said that within three hours Sunday morning they received nearly 30 weather-related calls, including five non-injury traffic accidents and numerous complaints of flooding from area residents and business owners.

One car flipped over on Ventura Road at Vineyard Avenue and another spun out on a puddle on the Ventura Freeway near Seacliff.

Authorities temporarily closed an eight-mile section of California 126 between Fillmore and Piru when a mudslide caused a three-car accident about 5:30 p.m., a California Highway Patrol dispatcher said.

No one was injured in the accident, but the mudslide forced the closure of the two-lane highway for less than an hour while authorities cleared the road.

“We had a lot of flooding problems,” Fire Department dispatcher Vicky Crabtree said.

In Thousand Oaks, a rain-soaked hillside scorched by a brush fire over the summer released a wall of mud into the back yards of eight North Ranch Village Townhomes.

Seventeen firefighters scooped out some of the mud and put a few dozen sandbags at the bottom of the hill to prevent further sliding, Ventura County Fire Capt. Charles Sitton said.

“The fire destroyed some of the growth that would have caught this,” Sitton said.

Erica Chapman, 19, a resident of the complex, said she was shocked to find mud a foot deep in her back yard when she woke up Sunday morning. “We have massive amounts of mud everywhere,” Chapman said. Her picnic table and chairs were damaged in the muddy cascade, she said.

Charles Peloso, who lives in another Thousand Oaks neighborhood, awakened Sunday morning to find his back yard turned into a large pond. “Rain gathered by the backdoor and looked like it was impending,” Peloso said. He said his wife ran to the phone and called 911. Fire officials dug a trench to prevent a foot of water from seeping into his house.

The roof in the stockroom at a Thousand Oaks K mart store collapsed under the weight of rainwater, damaging more than $10,000 worth of merchandise.

About 120 square feet of the stockroom roof caved in; the damage occurred in a separate building from the main store, where between 100 and 200 people were shopping. K mart officials closed the store for about an hour and a half as a precaution, said Robert O’Meara, merchandise manager of the store in the 300 block of Hampshire Road.

“We’re not sure if one of the drains got clogged or it was just overwhelmed by the amount of water,” said O’Meara, who was helping firefighters sweep out the water that poured into the room from the roof.

“I’m glad it didn’t happen last week,” he added. “We had a lot more people in the store, and a lot more merchandise.”

REGIONAL STORMS: A1