‘Humdinger’ of Storm Moving on Southland : Weather: Canyon areas could get 4 inches of rain. Property damage is estimated at $23 million.

Torrential rain was expected again in Southern California by sunrise today, the last in a wave of brutal storms already responsible for at least seven deaths, four people missing, an estimated $23 million in damage and some of the century’s worst flooding.

Forecasters said Friday that another inch or two of rain should fall, with as much as four inches in some canyon areas, raising concerns that the deluge would again send hundreds of people across the Southland scrambling for higher ground.

“On satellite, it looks like it’s going bonkers,” Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said of the weekend storm. “It’s a humdinger.”

Fearing that the storm might strike early, the Los Angeles Unified School District on Friday closed its 651 campuses. Los Angeles County fire officials estimated that a million sandbags had been distributed. And in Ojai, hardy Matilija Canyon residents, whose homes could be cut off if mudslides occur, were ignoring a recommendation by Ventura County authorities to evacuate.

“We want to go down with the ship,” said Nancy Goddard as she stocked up on firewood and checked the supply of food at her home on the banks of the swollen Matilija Creek. “I don’t want to be a troublemaker, but this is my home.”

Snowshoe-clad rescuers, poking long sticks into the deep powder, continued the hunt Friday for two skiers believed buried in an avalanche at Mt. Baldy. They again found no signs of Tim Pines, 31, of Dana Point and Charles Prior, 34, of San Clemente, missing since Tuesday.

After two days, authorities gave up the search for Lance Cpl. Jeffrey B. Johns, a 22-year-old aviation technician from Uniontown, Ohio. He was the only member of a nine-person crew not pulled from the ocean when a U.S. Marine helicopter went down Wednesday in stormy weather off the Ventura County coast.

Taking advantage of a lull in the storm Friday, federal, state and local officials spent the day assessing the performance of emergency workers and girding for the coming rain.

At a fire station not far from the Sepulveda Dam, Gov. Pete Wilson, U.S. Sen. John Seymour and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley thanked firefighters, Highway Patrol officers and a helicopter pilot who helped rescue motorists trapped Monday in as much as 15 feet of water.

“There are all kinds of unsung heroes,” Wilson said. “There are a lot of people who didn’t make it to the front pages and the evening news, who quietly, and very quickly, did very heroic work.”

Speaking later to reporters on a mud-slathered road in the dam basin, the governor said the storm caused at least $23 million in damage to public and private property in Southern California, not including cleanup costs.

Bradley asked property owners who suffered losses to report them to city officials so they can ask the federal Small Business Administration to make adequate low-interest loans available.

Meanwhile, a team of top National Weather Service officials flew in from their regional headquarters in Salt Lake City to weigh the work of forecasters in the west Los Angeles office.

Robert Richey, National Weather Service chief of meteorological services for the eight Western states, said he was concerned that flood warnings Monday in the Sepulveda Basin traveled in a “circuitous route” before getting to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which monitors the dam. He said meteorologists were busy Friday setting up a direct phone link with military officials.

“I think (the warning) could have gotten to them faster,” said Richey, adding that his findings would be made public at a news conference next Friday. “I want to make sure we have direct and immediate contact.”

But Col. Charles Thomas, who monitors the nearly 60-year-old Sepulveda Dam, said motorists were trapped in the basin partly because Monday’s forecast underestimated the strength of the downpour.

“I don’t want to point any fingers, but the forecast was different from what happened,” he said during a news conference at the Department of Public Works headquarters in Alhambra.

Thomas said that while the weather servicehad predicted at 8:30 a.m. that up to 0.4 inches would fall that day on coastal valleys, “in reality, the Sepulveda Reservoir recorded 4.05 inches of rain between noon and 6 p.m.”

Concern was also expressed by Los Angeles officials about the city’s preparedness to deal with emergencies in the Los Angeles River, where a 15-year-old boy, Adam Bischoff of Woodland Hills, died Wednesday when he was swept into swift waters.

Councilwoman Joy Picus proposed that the city consider permanently attaching rescue nets and cables to bridges along the river. Police officials suggested stationing lifeguards in the San Fernando Valley during this weekend’s storm.

The county’s chief lifeguard, Don Rohrer, said lifeguards probably could have saved Adam using techniques employed in riptides. But Rohrer said that even if lifeguards had been summoned, they could not have reached the San Fernando Valley in time from their beachside posts.

Officials in Ventura County, as well as flood victims there, said they should have been warned more quickly that a recreational vehicle park and a homeless encampment along the Ventura River were about to be flooded Wednesday.

Ventura Mayor Greg Carson said he supports a county proposal for mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas around the river whenever a warning is issued by the county Flood Control District.

Arnold Hubbard, owner of the Ventura Beach RV Resort, acknowledged that district officials warned him of flooding at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, but he did not pass on the warning to the 110 park residents until 9:15.

The new storm wave, churning out of the Gulf of Alaska, was expected to bring snow down to about the 4,000-foot level. Thunder was predicted, and temperatures were expected to be cooler, mostly in the 50s. Avalanche warnings were issued for the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada on Friday, and violently rotating funnel clouds formed off San Diego.

Since Monday, 13.25 inches of rain have fallen in Woodland Hills and 5.33 inches have fallen in downtown Los Angeles. Last year, the Civic Center received 14.73 inches and, the year before, 6.49. This year, 12.76 inches of rain have fallen at the Civic Center.

To escape a waterlogged hillside that started slipping downward, six frightened families fled their Santa Clarita houses Friday.

By late in the day, the hill above the 19000 block of Maplebay Court had not collapsed, but authorities feared that the weekend rain could send a wall of mud crashing into the homes.

“All the property up above is just cracking like crazy,” said Marian Mohler, an insurance supervisor ordered to evacuate her house.

Talk show host Johnny Carson told viewers late Thursday night that he tried to get to work the day before, but cascading cliffs and boulders near his Malibu home made driving impossible. Frantic NBC executives, who offered to ferry Carson by helicopter to their Burbank studios, were forced to show a rerun.

Carson poked fun at the offer, saying traveling by helicopter in high winds and pouring rain was not the brightest of ideas.

In Irvine, a California Highway Patrol officer said he caught a 35-pound carp while directing traffic at the flooded corner of Irvine Boulevard and Lambert Road. Officer Alvin Yamaguchi said he threw the fish--which had presumably floated down from a nearby reservoir--to dry ground with his bare hands.

“I looked down, and there was this great big fish,” he said. “It was humongous.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Jack Cheevers, Tracey Kaplan, Eric Malnic, Amy Pyle and Jocelyn Stewart in Los Angeles; Tina Daunt, Daryl Kelley, Mack Reed and correspondent Caitlin Rother in Ventura County, and Marla Cone in Orange County.

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