Heroic Actions Avert Tragedy for Motorists

By the time the National Weather Service got around to issuing a flood advisory at 1:15 p.m. Monday, more than 40 motorists on roads through the flood basin behind Sepulveda Dam already had gotten the terrifying message firsthand.

As relentless rain hammered down, the Los Angeles River, normally a trickle, swelled into a torrent and overflowed its banks, trapping people in their stalled vehicles.

Some of those stranded, realizing that the situation was rapidly worsening, abandoned their vehicles and slogged through the rising water to safety.

Walter Jones, 68, was among those who left their cars earlier, struggling to safety on foot.

“I knew I had to get out of there,” Jones said as he shivered in a blanket at a nearby fire station. “The engine had died, and the water was coming up and up.”

Jones said he climbed out of a window and started wading toward higher ground.

“The water was up to my shoulders,” he said. “Boy, that water was cold.”

Michael Ross, 36, of Studio City, was pulled from the roof of his car by a rescue helicopter. In a drama captured live by television news crews, Ross had nearly reached the chopper when the halter that held him slipped. He plunged 50 feet into the water.

Ross later said that when the noose slipped, he was watching the fireman who was reeling him.

“The look of terror on his face. . . . He was just as terrified for me as I was,” Ross said.

Nick Hardy, 30, said after reaching the shore of the ever-widening lake that for a moment, as the water got deeper and deeper, he began to wonder if he was going to make it.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said softly.

For those who waited a little longer, the water was too deep to wade. People clambered onto the roofs of their vehicles, waving frantically at the four Fire Department helicopters that had begun to swoop in over the lake that was building rapidly behind Sepulveda Dam.

Dodging repeated lightning strikes in the relentless downpour, helicopters plucked motorists from the rooftops of cars, vans and pickups. Somehow, no one died and very few were injured seriously.

Six-year-old Taraneh Aliabadi, her 12-year-old sister, Laleh, and their father, Nassi, 44, were trapped on the roof of their car for about 20 minutes before they were lifted off by a helicopter.

“I thought we would never see our family again,” Taraneh said.

“I was trying to calm her down,” her sister said. “But I was crying, too.”

Later in the afternoon, a television cameraman jumped into the water from a news helicopter to assist a man who had been foundering in the water. Both were rescued by some of the scores of firemen, police officers, county lifeguards and citizen volunteers who rushed in to help.

Most rescuers ignored their own safety and comfort to wade, slosh and swim full-clothed through the water to assist whomever they could.

A volunteer with a high-rise, four-wheel-drive managed to pull Edna Dambowic, 49, from her stalled catering van.

“I can’t swim,” Dambowic said later as she watched her van slowly disappear beneath the surface of the rising lake. “I’d been sitting there, waving a rag, trying to get someone to help me.”

Mark Harincar, 22, of Canoga Park said he and another man were standing on top of his car, holding onto a signpost, when the current began to sweep the vehicle out from under them.

“We were hanging onto the top of that signpost” when rescuers arrived, Harincar said.

A woman motorist, who did not give her name, said she knew just what to do when her car sputtered to a stop in water up to the running boards.

“I have a car phone,” she said. “So I called 911.”

Jim Orvis, 32, a Woodland Hills resident who likes to go surfing in the winter, said he was heading home from Malibu in his wet suit when he came upon the flooded recreational area and decided to do what he could to help.

Joining a group of fellow volunteers, he helped push and drag several vehicles to higher ground before the water got too deep to continue.

“It’s pretty insane,” he said. “But it’s groovy.”

Back at the fire station on Sepulveda Boulevard, firefighters and Red Cross volunteers handed out blankets and fresh, dry clothing to people who had been pulled from the water.

Most of those rescued sat calmly on cots, enjoying the hot food and drink provided by the volunteers and chatting quietly about how they would get home or where they would spend the night.

A nearby hotel offered discounts to those who wanted a place to stay.

Throughout the afternoon, the rain continued to fall, and the water continued to rise. By nightfall, after more than six inches of rain had fallen at some points in the San Fernando Valley, all vehicles had disappeared and the only things protruding above the surface were treetops and light posts.

Eddy Bien stood on an overpass on the east side of the big lake, staring down at the water below.

There, a few hours before, his wife, Ethel, had abandoned their stalled car when firefighters had arrived to rescue her. Ethel Bien was now safely in a motel, but the expensive Jaguar sedan was still down there somewhere in 12 feet of water.

“Goodby, car,” Eddy Bien said.

Times staff writer Aaron Curtiss contributed to this story

Southland Rain Watch

REGION & 24-HOUR PRECIPITATION IN INCHES *

L.A. BASIN

Avalon/Catalina: .35

Culver City: .90

Long Beach: .45

L.A. Civic Center: .58

L.A. Int’l Airport: .24

Montebello: .50

Santa Monica: .59

Torrance: .51

UCLA: 1.33

VALLEYS/CANYONS

Beaumont: .57

Monrovia: .95

Northridge: 4.62

Pasadena: 1.37

San Gabriel: .71

Santa Clarita: 3.06

Woodland Hills: 6.14

ORANGE COUNTY

Anaheim: .50

Newport Beach: .29

Santa Ana: .34

SAN DIEGO

Oceanside: .25

San Diego: .46

MOUNTAINS

Big Bear Lake: .50

Mt. Wilson: 3.40

DESERTS

Victorville: NA

Palm Springs: .30

SANTA BARBARA/VENTURA

Santa Barbara: 2.01

Ventura: 2.76

SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY

Bakersfield: .16

* Measured over a 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. Monday. NA indicates not available.

SOURCE: National Weather Service and Weather Data Inc.

Compiled by researcher Michael Meyers