Southland Braces for a New Storm : Weather: Deaths rise to six. Searches continue for five others as Southern California gets a brief respite. The next Pacific onslaught is due to hit today.

Soggy Southern California awoke Thursday to a pre-dawn bang of thunder and hail but the fourth day of rain soon subsided, giving storm-battered residents a chance to assess the deluge’s grim toll and brace for the next pounding late today.

The number of dead rose to six, as the body of 15-year-old Adam Bischoff--whose futile struggle to stay afloat seemed to capture the storm’s tragic dimensions--was pulled from the Los Angeles River. The death of a 63-year-old Orange County woman who lost control of her car on a flooded road Wednesday night also was attributed to stormy conditions.

Searches continued for at least five others, including Lance Cpl. Jeffrey B. Johns, 22, a crew member of a U.S. Marine helicopter that went down off the coast of Oxnard. Also missing were two experienced skiers feared buried in an avalanche at Mt. Baldy and a suspect believed to have disappeared in the Santa Ana River while eluding police.

Rescue teams again hunted for bodies in the debris-clogged delta of the Ventura River, which subsided after torrential flooding Wednesday submerged the Ventura Beach RV Resort trailer park. All the residents have been accounted for, but one homeless man who made his camp in the riverbed drowned and another is reported missing.

By Thursday, the river was little more than a wide, mud-filled basin dotted with mattresses, lumber, food containers and splintered trailers. A few dead carp and crawdads were left scattered in the ooze.

“This is what I came back to,” lamented RV park tenant Arthur Currier, 69, as he gathered a water-logged wallet, heart medication and cash from his saturated 32-foot motor home. “This makes a person sick.”

With forecasters calling for another storm to strike the Southland later today, the Los Angeles Unified School District canceled classes today for all 630,000 students as a “common-sense precaution.”

As much as two inches of rain could fall by Sunday, said Steve Burback, a meteorologist for WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. Light showers are expected again on Tuesday, but Burback said that would probably be the last gasp of one of the century’s worst storms.

“It looks like you’ll be done for a while,” he said.

Thursday’s downpour began with an early-morning burst, but quickly fizzled. Power was knocked out for thousands of customers in four counties and for a brief time at Los Angeles City Hall. Hail fell in East Los Angeles. In Anaheim, a small tornado slammed into an auto lubrication station, but no injuries were reported.

Lightning struck the National Weather Service headquarters in West Los Angeles, temporarily delaying transmission of weather updates.

“Somebody up there doesn’t like us,” said Bill Hoffer, a weather service specialist.

By afternoon, however, the city was treated to what in recent days has been a rare sight--blue sky.

Hoping to shore up their defenses for the weekend, hundreds of people descended on hardware stores, outdoor-clothing shops and contracting firms, where items that normally gather dust on the shelves sold like portable fans in August.

At King Pump & Dewatering Corp. in Santa Fe Springs, almost the entire stock of several dozen pumps was rented out Thursday. Anawalt Lumber and Material Co. in North Hollywood had “pretty much sold out” its supply of tarps and ponchos. And the people at World Restoration, an Orange County firm that repairs water and fire damage, said they felt as though they were being asked to live up to their name.

“Our stock is sold out and people are still calling today,” said Damita Ziegler, manager of the Eddie Bauer store at the Glendale Galleria. “Everybody is rushing out in a frenzy for rubber shoes. I mean the masses. It’s just amazing.”

By a fluke of timing, Thursday also marked the opening of the National Roof Contractors Assn. convention in Anaheim. For a group that has been hit hard by the recession, the rains could not have come at a better time.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any outward celebration because of the rains, but it is one industry that’s certainly enjoying the weather,” said Richard Gordinier, president of the Huntington Park-based Henry Group of Companies, which makes roofing products.

He estimated that his firm has sold between 500,000 and 750,000 gallons of Henry 208--a roof cement that works even when wet--since the downpour first hit Southern California on Monday.

Many more people, who spent the day digging out from layers of mud, did not feel so fortunate.

* Several miles of beach were closed in Ventura and Orange counties, while the 76-mile-long Los Angeles County coastline remained closed for a fourth day, polluted by sewage runoff and littered with garbage.

“It looks like someone took a dump truck, opened the back and just drove it along the edge of the beach and poured it out,” said Adi Liberman, executive director of the nonprofit Heal the Bay group in Santa Monica.

* In Malibu, residents worked feverishly to fill sandbags in anticipation of more flooding along Las Flores Creek, which shifted it course by at least 30 feet as the result of a landslide on the west side of the canyon.

“I enjoyed it here but now it’s time to go,” said John Conover, 30, as he packed his things to move out of his inundated duplex.

* In the small town of Quartz Hill southwest of Lancaster, residents spent the day cleaning up tons of debris that washed through the area Wednesday when part of an earthen flood basin collapsed. Officials estimated that about 75 houses and 25 businesses suffered interior flooding.

“I’ve been here 15 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Quartz Hill resident Bill Myles.

* In Hesperia, officials devised an escape route for about 10,000 residents in the Mesa area after virtually all of their roads were washed out Wednesday. They also finished distributing the last of 19,000 sandbags.

* In Orange County, authorities worked to clear the Aliso Creek Resort in South Laguna, which was flooded when a four-foot wave slammed through the 62-room hotel. Large wooden beams snapped, concrete pilings washed away and several guests were evacuated in the basket of a backhoe.

* At the RV park in Ventura, owner Arnold Hubbard said he intends to reopen as soon as possible. Ventura City Councilman Jim Monahan, whose company received about $40,000 to help build the riverside park, said he would support that effort. But other members of the council, which approved construction of the park despite staff warnings in 1985, said they will ask lawyers whether the city can block its reopening.

“There’s no way it should be rebuilt, because this park is in a river bottom,” said Paul Tebbel, spokesman for Friends of the Ventura River, an environmental group. “This happened once and it’s going to happen again.”

Help to victims of the flood, which Los Angeles officials said caused about $1.5 million in damage to city property, came in a variety of forms.

Bekins Moving & Storage Co. offered flood victims free storage space for household goods for up to six months. First Interstate Bank of California unveiled a program to provide low-interest loans to owners of homes damaged by the drenching.

The California Conservation Corps sent 135 youths to Sylmar, Anaheim, Northridge and Camarillo, where they laid sandbags and spread plastic tarps to prevent further saturation of the already unstable ground.

“I heard about all the flooding and everything, and I heard that they needed help,” said Dominic Burton, a 23-year-old Cal State Northridge student who helped out Thursday. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

For all the hardship it caused, the storm did not bring an end to the drought.

At Mammoth in the Sierra Nevada, where runoff from the mountains supplies Southern California’s unquenchable thirst, the water content of the snowpack rose from 13.8 inches on Sunday to 19.3 inches on Thursday. Normal for this time of year is 30.4 inches.

“It is difficult to comprehend,” Gov. Pete Wilson told reporters, adding that the devastating rains seemed “almost a mockery” as the state enters its sixth year of drought.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Leslie Berger, John Chandler, Tina Daunt, Kevin Johnson, Daryl Kelley, Eric Malnic, Mack Reed and Ron Russell.

Southland Rain Watch

REGION PRECIPITATION* 24-HOUR STORM TOTAL TOTAL** L.A. BASIN Avalon/Catalina .20 3.81 Culver City NA NA Long Beach .30 3.67 L.A. Civic Center .69 7.21 L.A. Int’l Airport .20 3.44 Montebello .60 NA Santa Monica .40 4.44 Torrance NA NA UCLA .40 8.36 VALLEYS/CANYONS Beaumont 1.68 5.23 Monrovia .69 8.43 Northridge 1.12 NA Pasadena .72 NA San Gabriel .55 8.21 Santa Clarita NA NA Woodland Hills .72 15.55 ORANGE COUNTY Anaheim .57 5.54 Newport Beach .79 5.17 Santa Ana NA NA SAN DIEGO Oceanside .87 3.29 San Diego .91 2.60 MOUNTAINS Big Bear Lake 1.71 3.37 Mt. Wilson .65 18.05 DESERTS Victorville .35 NA Lancaster .00 NA Palm Springs .84 NA SANTA BARBARA/VENTURA Santa Barbara .67 6.21 Ventura .36 8.16 SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY Bakersfield .29 1.34

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

** Precipitation since 2/5/92

SOURCE: National Weather Service and Weather Data Inc.

Compiled by researcher Michael Meyers