Fierce Storm Creates Floods, Clogs Freeways

A torrential storm swept through Southern California on Monday, flooding homes and highways, derailing a train over a freeway, setting off rockslides, clogging mountain roads with snow and spinning off waterspouts and destructive cyclonic winds.

Rain pounded the Los Angeles area throughout the day, with more than four inches reported in Montebello, Monrovia and Anaheim by 4 p.m. A record 1.26 inches fell at the Los Angeles Civic Center by midafternoon, easily eclipsing the record for the date of 0.9 of an inch, set in 1918.

Morning and evening commuter traffic moved at a snail’s pace if it moved at all, with the Pomona, Santa Ana, Long Beach and Costa Mesa freeways all shut down at various times by accidents and flooding in low-lying areas.

The tangle worsened in the afternoon when a washout derailed a train on an overpass above the Harbor Freeway near Gardena, leaving four rail cars perched over freeway lanes and halting traffic in both directions. Police said the freeway closure could last until early this morning.

Although most of the storm-related traffic accidents were minor, a woman was killed when she swerved to avoid a rockslide in Malibu Canyon and crashed head-on into a truck.

A teen-age girl was pulled uninjured from La Mirada Creek in La Mirada after the waterway’s rain-swollen waters swept her off a pedestrian bridge, security officers at Biola University said.

A tornado-like wind was reported in Anaheim, and mobile homes in Westminster were ripped from their foundations by cyclonic winds. Two waterspouts were spotted off the coast near San Diego.

Rising floodwaters seeped into celebrity homes in the Malibu area and forced the closure of roads behind Sepulveda Dam. Heavy surf generated by the storm pounded beaches from Point Conception south to the Mexican border, with occasional 10-foot waves reported.

The steady rains forced Disneyland to close for the first time since a storm shut it in 1987.

Scattered power outages were reported in Los Angeles, with about 15,000 customers affected at one time or another on Sunday night and Monday. Power was restored to all but a few by nightfall Monday.

Heavy snow fell throughout the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains, and chains or snow tires were required on most roads above 4,000 feet.

Forecasters said the rough weather should move out to the east by early this morning, but another powerful storm is expected to hit the Los Angeles area late Thursday.

The morning rush hour was a disaster Monday, with commuter traffic backed up for miles in every direction as heavy downpours flooded freeway underpasses and made pavement dangerously slick in Southern California.

“It was a real mess out there,” said California Highway Patrolman Ernie Garcia. “We had problems everywhere.”

One of the worst backups occurred around the junction of the Costa Mesa and Santa Ana freeways in Tustin, where the flooding brought all traffic to a halt shortly before 7 a.m.

One motorist who stopped on the Santa Ana Freeway said it took her more than three hours to get to work from Riverside to Santa Ana on Monday morning.

Traffic was detoured around the freeway interchange throughout the day while Caltrans crews pumped out the water. The junction did not reopen until 5:20 p.m.

About 15 miles to the north, in the City of Commerce, traffic in both directions on the Santa Ana Freeway was blocked by underpass flooding for about seven hours. Flooding shut down all traffic on the Long Beach Freeway at Slauson Avenue for about 8 1/2 hours.

About 1 p.m., a Southern Pacific railroad freight train derailed over the Harbor Freeway at 149th Street in Los Angeles’ Harbor-Gateway Strip, forcing the closure of the freeway in both directions until the railway cars could be removed and creating a mammoth traffic jam that extended into the evening rush hour.

An injury accident on slippery pavement shut down eastbound traffic on the Pomona Freeway at Azusa Avenue on Monday morning for more than an hour, and a crash involving as many as 20 vehicles on the northbound Long Beach Freeway at Florence Avenue backed up evening commuter traffic for six miles.

In Malibu, Dawn Marie Vanden-Broeder, 20, of Canoga Park, a kindergarten teacher, died during a morning downpour when she swerved to avoid rocks that had tumbled onto Malibu Canyon Road and crashed head-on into a truck, officers said.

A La Mirada High School student was swept about a quarter of a mile down La Mirada Creek before she was pulled from the water by maintenance workers at Biola University, campus police said.

The girl, who was not harmed by her ordeal, walked home without giving anyone her name, said Steve Loomis, safety director at the university.

“She stated that she was attempting to cross a pedestrian bridge in the park and she was swept by the stream into the water,” Loomis said.

In east Anaheim, a tornado-like wind ripped through an industrial area during the morning, overturning a car, Anaheim police said. Witnesses said the cyclonic wind tossed trash cans and debris into the air and tore skylights from a building’s roof.

“It was about half the width of the street and it went down the left side of the street pulling up all the water from the gutters,” said Bob Adams, service manager at Mission Uniform and Linen Service in Anaheim.

In nearby Westminster, cyclonic winds tore through a mobile home park, uprooting trees, clawing at roofs and pulling three mobile homes off their foundations. A 50-foot palm tree in the Summerset Mobile Estate park smashed down on a car belonging to Robert White, who said the winds were so powerful that they hurled a chain saw onto the roof of his home.

In Ventura County, a whirling wind uprooted about 20 trees in the Moorpark neighborhood of Home Acres at about 5 a.m. Monday.

“It hit here like hell,” said Bill Harney, a Home Acres resident who went outdoors after the sun rose to find the table and benches in his gazebo overturned.

“I wanted it to rain,” he said. “I didn’t want it to tear the house apart.”

A tree limb crashed onto a house in Ojai, causing about $20,000 worth of structural damage, fire officials said. The damage exposed the furnishings to the rain, which caused another $5,000 damage, officials said.

In the exclusive Malibu Colony, Malibu Creek overflowed and water began washing against the back of some expensive beachfront homes belonging to several celebrities, including tennis star John McEnroe and actor Larry Hagman.

“This is Lake Malibu,” Hagman said as he stood in his garage, watching the water lapping around the wheels of his Rolls-Royce.

Actor Burgess Meredith wandered by, and Hagman invited him inside.

“I was standing there shivering,” Meredith said. “He took me in.”

Local residents used sandbags stockpiled at Los Angeles County fire stations to build barriers to hold back floodwaters.

In Long Beach, the rain flooded an underground parking garage, soaking more than 30 cars. Tidal surges eroded some beachfront, and some boats sustained minor damage when they were knocked about in their moorings.

In nearby Seal Beach, a 30 year-old man was cited for jet-skiing down flooded Electric Avenue and causing the water to seep into several residences and businesses, a Seal Beach police officer said.

“A group of vigilantes armed with rakes and brooms were about to confront him when we got there,” watch commander Dean Zanone said.

The jet-skier was cited for “failure to obey warning devices,” a never-before-used vehicle code in Seal Beach, Zanone said.

In the high-desert community of Hesperia, flash floods threatened as many as 20 homes and rendered at least 30 roads impassable. The flooding also forced closure of several Interstate 15 freeway ramps in the Victorville area.

In the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains, heavy snow prompted the National Weather Service to issue winter storm warnings. Big Bear Lake reported up to 14 inches of new snow by nightfall, with snow still falling.

Ski resort operators were delighted, but officials were keeping a close eye on structures damaged in the recent series of earthquakes in the area.

“Obviously, the snow is a concern to us, with the weight building up on structures,” said Al Langworthy of the San Bernardino County Office of Disaster Preparedness. “We may have structures that won’t support as much weight as they used to.”

In Los Angeles, Monday’s 1.26 inches of rain at the downtown gauge raised the total for the season there to 2.25 inches, compared to a normal season’s total for the date of 2.87 inches.

Other totals for the day included 4.82 inches in Montebello, 4.35 in Monrovia, 4.52 in San Gabriel, 4.06 in Anaheim, 3.50 in Pasadena, 3.43 in Long Beach, 2.82 in Northridge and 2.25 in Culver City.

But even with all the rain, state officials said California’s long drought is not over.

Six straight years of abnormally dry conditions have left the state’s key reservoirs fed by the Sierra Nevada less than half full. And this rainy season--already one-third over--remains much drier than average despite Monday’s downpours and snowstorms.

“We haven’t had enough rain to even begin to say we’re out of the drought,” said Dean Thompson, a spokesman for the State Drought Center in Sacramento.

“The storm was good news, but let’s not credit it with more than it is,” he said. “It was a better first week in December than we had last year, but not that much better. We’d need about three more storms in order to wind up with a normal December, and even then it wouldn’t make up for the bad November.”

More than half of urban California’s water is imported, much of it from the State Water Project, which relies largely on runoff from the High Sierra. Snow was piling up throughout the Sierra on Monday, with as much as four feet of snow having fallen in some resort areas during the last three days.

The high temperature at the Los Angeles Civic Center on Monday was 55 degrees, just three degrees above the pre-dawn low of 52.

Rick Dittmann, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said skies should be partly cloudy today and Wednesday, with highs near 60 degrees. He said another storm is due late Thursday, with more rain expected on Thursday night and Friday.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Andrea Ford and Ron Russell in Los Angeles; Roxana Kopetman in Long Beach; Aaron Curtiss in the San Fernando Valley; Tom Gorman in Riverside; David Reyes, David Avila, Bob Barker and Bob Elston in Costa Mesa; Gerald Faris in La Mirada, and Mack Reed and correspondent James Maiella Jr. in Ventura.

Southland Rain Watch

Rainfall figures for the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. Monday. Season totals and norms are based on precipitation from July 1 to date.

REGION PRECIPITATION IN INCHES 24-Hour Storm Season Season Total Total* Total Norm L.A. BASIN Avalon/Catalina 2.73 2.93 3.45 2.38 Culver City 2.25 2.69 3.71 2.47 Long Beach 3.43 3.43 3.99 3.34 L.A. Civic Center 1.45 1.50 2.25 2.96 L.A. Int’l Airport 2.32 2.50 3.59 2.64 Montebello 4.82 4.82 5.11 2.50 Santa Monica 1.75 1.83 2.30 2.57 Torrance 2.02 2.20 2.98 2.71 UCLA 3.04 3.18 4.44 3.50 VALLEYS/CANYONS Beaumont 1.70 2.15 5.69 3.78 Monrovia 4.35 4.40 7.10 NA Northridge 2.82 2.87 3.38 NA Pasadena 3.50 3.50 5.61 3.65 Riverside 1.93 2.11 2.95 2.04 San Bernardino 2.11 2.45 3.13 3.32 San Gabriel 4.52 4.60 6.79 3.47 Santa Clarita 2.40 2.43 3.19 3.63 Woodland Hills 3.32 3.46 4.61 3.38 ORANGE COUNTY Anaheim 4.06 4.09 4.91 NA Lake Forest 2.60 2.68 3.15 NA Newport Beach 2.50 2.50 3.18 2.29 San Juan Cap. 3.05 3.05 4.02 NA Santa Ana 2.00 2.00 2.90 2.61 SAN DIEGO COUNTY Chula Vista 0.00 0.22 0.36 2.18 Coronado 1.65 1.98 2.25 NA Del Mar 1.10 1.49 2.30 NA Miramar 0.84 1.06 1.40 NA Oceanside 1.12 1.39 1.59 2.28 San Diego 0.97 1.38 1.66 2.10 Vista 1.07 1.24 2.12 3.10 Alpine 1.00 1.73 4.39 3.62 El Cajon 0.00 0.58 1.39 3.13 Escondido 1.32 1.96 2.98 3.12 Fallbrook 1.42 2.01 3.21 1.79 Poway 0.79 1.26 2.11 3.04 Ramona 0.00 0.02 0.45 3.66 SOUTHLAND MOUNTAINS Big Bear Lake 1.52 1.74 5.36 6.82 Cuyamaca Park 0.78 1.46 5.50 8.39 Mt. Laguna 0.75 1.60 9.71 NA Mt. Wilson 3.26 3.59 5.36 6.46 Palomar Mtn. 0.00 0.27 13.74 7.59 DESERTS Death Valley 0.28 0.28 0.28 0.77 Borrego Springs 0.77 1.51 1.64 1.54 El Centro 0.04 0.54 0.54 2.23 Palm Springs 0.00 0.53 1.06 1.16 Thermal 0.00 0.39 0.39 1.78 SANTA BARBARA/VENTURA Ojai 0.00 0.16 1.65 1.32 Oxnard 2.00 2.32 2.33 4.04 Point Mugu 3.32 4.35 4.76 2.87 Santa Barbara 1.99 2.81 3.74 NA Ventura 2.27 2.84 4.37 3.48 SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY Bakersfield 0.86 0.89 1.82 1.29

NA indicates figures not available. In other cases, some totals may be incomplete because of missing station reports.

* Amount of rainfall since the last zero-precipitation day.

SOURCE: National Weather Service and WeatherData Inc.