Killer Floods Ravage Ventura : Storm: Heavy rains wash motor homes into the ocean and force most freeways to close. Gov. Wilson declares a state of emergency.

Heavy rains sent floodwaters surging down the canyons and creekbeds of Ventura County Wednesday, killing at least three people, washing more than 30 motor homes into the ocean and forcing the closure of most of the county’s major freeways.

The torrential downpour was swift and deadly, touching off a massive rescue operation that plucked dozens of people from islands in the swift-running Ventura River and from the submerged Ventura Beach RV Resort, where 110 people were forced to flee their homes.

Among those killed in the flash flood were a woman nine months pregnant and her fiance, who suffocated in their bed when tons of mud, rock and trees smashed through their bedroom wall in Foster Park just before 7 a.m.

The Ventura County coroner’s office identified the two as county employee Michele Bovee, 27, and flooring contractor Glenn Queen, 30.

The flood also washed away the temporary campsites of dozens of homeless people who live in the usually dry Ventura River bed.

Ventura County firefighters pulled the body of an unidentified 35-year-old man from the river where he apparently drowned, said coroner’s investigator Mitch Breese. Two transients also were reported missing and believed to have been pulled into the floodwaters, according to county fire officials.

As the flood hit the RV park on the western outskirts of Ventura, the park’s 110 residents scrambled to flee their homes. County sheriff’s helicopters hovered over the area, and a sheriff’s Hovercraft skimmed in and out, pulling some people to safety and checking sunken mobile homes for others possibly trapped inside.

Gov. Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency for Ventura and Los Angeles counties soon after Ventura County Sheriff John V. Gillespie and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley made the request.

A governor’s spokesman said the declaration will pave the way for state emergency assistance and for federal funds that could provide low-interest loans for the hardest hit areas.

While Ventura County was the hardest hit region of Southern California Wednesday, storm damage and fatalities continued to rise in Los Angeles and other neighboring counties.

Two people, including a teen-age boy, were feared dead after falling into the raging Los Angeles River in Woodland Hills and in Bell. On the freeways, a 27-year-old man was killed when his van flipped on a slick Interstate 5 off-ramp in Lebec.

Floods and mudslides closed roads from the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu to the Golden State Freeway in Sun Valley. A collapsed sound wall shut the Ventura Freeway in Calabasas for an hour.

Mud flooded the Amtrak line between Glendale and Santa Barbara, forcing the closure of the tracks. And a downpour in the Mojave Desert forced the Discovery space shuttle to scuttle plans for a ride home to Cape Canaveral.

Hammering rain dumped mud into homes in Bel-Air, Agoura Hills and the Antelope Valley community of Quartz Hill, and forced the cancellation of classes at Cal State Northridge, Pepperdine University and California Lutheran University. Forecasters said another storm could dump two more inches of rain on the area by noon today. A third storm, scooping up tropical moisture in the Pacific, is expected to hit by late Friday or Saturday, with the potential for several more inches of rain, said Marty McKewon of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts to The Times.

By 9 a.m. Wednesday, the downpour had pushed the swift-running Ventura River over its banks, across the Ventura Freeway and into the low-lying RV resort just west of Ventura.

The rushing water quickly submerged dozens of campers, trailers and cars in the park, as well as the campsites of dozens of homeless people who live in the usually dry riverbed to the east.

Meanwhile, the California Highway Patrol closed the Ventura Freeway at its intersection with California 33, where the swollen river flooded the interchange. Traffic backed up for several miles on the major artery until 12:30 p.m., when floodwaters subsided and the freeway was reopened.

The highway patrol also closed California 150 in the Ojai Valley while Caltrans crews fought to clear mudslides from the winding mountain road. Also closed was California 126 from Fillmore to the Golden State Freeway after the Sespe Creek and its tributaries overflowed their banks and dumped mud over the highway.

The water also undermined and damaged the Torrey Bridge that carries Guiberson Road over the Santa Clara River in Santa Paula, forcing the CHP to close it for repairs, said Brad Prows, CHP spokesman.

In eastern Ventura County, rain-swollen Potrero Creek threatened to wash out the only bridge to the community of Lake Sherwood, forcing authorities to close the bridge. Sheriff’s Lt. Richard Diaz said the bridge would remain closed until city public works crews could dump boulders into the creek bed to prevent further erosion.

The powerful storm disrupted Amtrak service between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara Wednesday, a spokesman said. The threat of problems also forced Amtrak to cancel all service between Los Angeles and Oxnard today, as well as the Coast Starlight service between Los Angeles and Oakland, the spokesman said. Rains also broke an eight-inch sewage pipeline, dumping about 20,000 gallons of raw sewage into the creek, said Mark Capron, engineer for the Triunfo County Sanitation District, which owns the pipeline.

Officials shut down sewage pumps leading away from about 200 homes around Lake Sherwood and dispatched tanker trucks to cart away sewage, which normally flows through the pipe to a Malibu treatment plant, he said.

Even as the rain began tapering off at midmorning Wednesday, floodwaters could be seen lapping over the roofs of mobile homes and campers at the Ventura Beach RV Resort.

About half of the more than 60 recreational vehicles in the park were swept into the stream, some crushed against the Southern Pacific railroad trestle by the powerful current and others swept out to sea.

“They looked like Tinker Toys being washed away,” said Arnold Hubbard, owner and developer of the RV park.

Hubbard said county Flood Control District officials called him just after 8:30 a.m. to warn him to watch the river level.

‘We weren’t expecting the water to sneak in the back like it did,” Hubbard said.

He pointed to a gray patch in the water. “That’s my brand new Lincoln out there along with about 40 rigs (trailers). The water is as much as eight feet deep in places.”

By midafternoon, County Fire Department divers in scuba gear were swimming around the submerged RV resort, checking mobile homes for possible fatalities.

Fire Department spokesman Barry Simmons said there were reports of two more bodies seen in the river near the RV park, but he said they may have been washed out to sea.

“If the bodies went into the ocean, they tend to sink, and then they float to the surface days later,” he said.

About 30 RV park residents and homeless people displaced by the flood had taken cover at a temporary shelter set up by the Red Cross at DeAnza Middle School nearby.

Elsewhere along the path of the floodwaters Wednesday, a swift-rising tributary of the Ventura River forced the evacuation of 63 elderly nursing home residents from the Casa Blanca Residential Care home in Oak View.

“With the amount of people we have, if it were to actually flood--and it looked like it would--we would not have been able to get them all out,” said nursing home administrator Debbie Conner. “A lot of these people have Alzheimer’s disease, so even a helicopter evacuation would have been impossible because they can’t follow directions.”

The nursing home residents were taken to the Nordhoff High School gymnasium in nearby Ojai, the designated evacuation shelter of the American Red Cross.

“It seems they’re pretty confused for the most part, but they’re being troupers,” Conner said of the residents, who were to be bedded down on cots on the gymnasium floor.

In Santa Paula, storm-swollen waters rushed through the normally dry bed of the Santa Clara River.

“It was a small creek,” said Elsa Caulley, a five-year Santa Paula resident who lives near its banks. “Now it’s a river. It’s wicked.”

She and her husband, Harry, said they are prepared to evacuate if necessary. “We’ll go wherever there ain’t no water,” Harry Caulley said.

Running as deep as 4 1/2 feet in some areas, the muddied creek carried branches, boulders and other debris past pockets of neighborhoods.

City officials are worried that boulders carried downstream from Ojai Valley may fill the creek bed further and force the water level higher, endangering nearby residents and chipping away at concrete flood control channels that the Army Corps of Engineers built 20 years ago.

In the Live Oaks area of the Ojai Valley, Coyote Creek topped its banks about 8 a.m. and began filling the houses nearby with water and mud.

Joyce Sandbom said, “I could see it gradually coming up and overtopping the bridge” that crosses the creek to her house.

After firefighters helped her out of her house, she went to Oakview Elementary School to pick up her son and daughter when the rain had become torrential.

“We were crying at school because I was worried about my mom,” said her 9-year-old son, Travis.

County Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg said flooding in some places rivaled the deluge in the deadly storms of January, 1969, which killed more than 90 people in Southern California.

Floods that year wiped out the Ventura Marina and wrecked sewer plants, power lines and water systems.

Some county officials also likened it to heavy storms that soaked Ventura County in 1978, flooding low-lying areas and causing millions of dollars in property damage.

Contributing to this story from Ventura were Times staff writers Santiago O’Donnell, Joanna M. Miller, Sherry Joe, Collin Nash, Daryl Kelley and Tina Daunt and correspondents Larry Speer, Caitlin Rother, Patrick McCartney and Christopher Pummer. Staff writers Ron Russell, Richard Lee Colvin, Richard Holguin, Myron Levin, Leslie Berger, Aaron Curtiss, Bob Pool, Josh Meyer, Amy Pyle, George Skelton and John Needham also reported.

More Coverage

NO WARNING?--Ventura officials question whether an early-warning plan existed for a recreational vehicle park that was flooded. B1

THE DROUGHT--Relentless stormy weather that brought death and devastation to the Southland on Wednesday inspired a smidgen of optimism among drought-watchers. A3

THE FLOOD--Additional pictures and coverage of the storm that flooded parts of Ventura County, killing at least three people. A5

Additional stories: A4, D1.