COUNTYWIDE : Rains Bring Pileups on Freeways

Another fast-moving storm pelted Orange County and other parts of Southern California on Sunday, triggering several freeway pileups in what weather forecasters called a precursor to a huge tempest expected to pound the area beginning Tuesday.

Rain was blamed in part for a 20-car pileup on the San Bernardino Freeway that left several people injured. The early-afternoon crash in West Covina was one of several multicar collisions on rain-slicked Southland freeways, including one south of San Clemente on the Interstate 5, authorities said.

Forecasters said showers and isolated thunderstorms were expected through today before the storm clears out. Another storm system building in the Gulf of Alaska is expected to move into Southern California on Tuesday night, bringing heavy rains and winds up to 25 m.p.h. through Thursday.

“This storm is going to stick around for a while,” said Steve Burback, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “There’s no sign that we’re going into a dry period for a while. The area will just have enough time to dry off before the next storm hits.”

That will barely give Orange County public works crews enough time to clean roadways of tons of mud and debris from the weekend rainstorms, said Bill Reiter, county public works operations manager.

Reiter, who is responsible for 350 miles of flood channels and storm drains in the county, expressed concern about a forecast Sunday calling for an overnight drenching ending this morning.

“Every storm concerns me now because the ground is so wet,” Reiter said on Sunday. “If we get an inch tonight (Sunday), that’s plenty . . . because everything we get now is runoff.”

Work crews will spend today and Tuesday cleaning up from a weekend storm that inundated some agricultural fields in Irvine, he said.

“We have a lot of mud and debris. I hope we get two days of clear weather to do this,” Reiter said.

On Sunday, Burback said about .24 of an inch of rain was reported in Santa Ana for a 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. Anaheim reported .23 of an inch of rain, Lake Forest .28 of an inch and San Juan Capistrano .26, he said.

The leading edge of the next storm is expected to arrive Tuesday evening, with moderate winds and cloudy conditions, Burback said. Two to four inches of rain, with higher amounts in the mountains, can be expected beginning as early as Tuesday evening and lasting through Friday, Burback said.

In Orange County, a four-car collision on southbound Interstate 5, just south of San Clemente, left four people injured, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Analilian Martinez, 33, of Los Angeles and her 10-month-old daughter were thrown from one of the four cars, the CHP said. The mother and child suffered no major injuries in the 7:55 a.m. accident, a CHP dispatcher said.

“They both were up and walking,” said the dispatcher. The injured pair were treated and released at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, the CHP said.

Matilde Galindo, 48, of Orange, the driver of another car, and her 15-year-old daughter, who was not named, suffered minor injuries in the collision, officers said. Drivers and passengers in two other cars were not hurt, the CHP said.

A five-car collision on the Harbor Freeway near Exposition Boulevard and an eight-car crash on Interstate 5, near the East Los Angeles interchange, were also both blamed on the storm. No serious injuries were reported in either crash.

Los Angeles city sanitation crews said they had contained a sewage spill in Los Angeles Harbor caused by Friday’s storm, but not before nearly 12 million gallons of partially treated sewage had flowed into the Los Angeles Harbor off San Pedro. Officials blamed the spill on a power failure.

Inner Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro remained closed Sunday as county health officials moved to determine the degree of sewage contamination in the harbor. The spill was confined primarily to the harbor, said Clarence Mansell, manager of the city’s Terminal Island sewage plant.

The snow level in the mountains dropped to 6,500 feet Sunday with up to seven inches of new snow expected from this storm in the higher elevations. Meteorologists expected the snow level to drop to 5,000 feet by midweek.

Sunday’s storm follows one on Friday that caused a variety of problems, including a 100-vehicle pileup in Cajon Pass that was blamed on fog. One person died and 11 were critically injured in that crash.