Flood Alerts Issued as Rain Batters Region

Flood alerts were issued for Southern California through tonight as two vast weather systems moved onshore with steady rain on Friday afternoon, setting off mudslides, triggering a massive sewage spill and flooding a creek that swept a man to his death in Long Beach.

The National Weather Service said the situation was dangerous and the flood potential was “the highest it has been in years.”

As the main force of the storm systems approached Los Angeles on Friday evening, Mayor Tom Bradley declared a local emergency, saying the area is threatened with “extraordinary loss of life and property.”

The ground in most areas is saturated, and forecasters expect up to 5 inches of rain by Sunday night in the San Fernando and other coastal valleys, with up to twice that much in the foothills.

The warnings prompted the Los Angeles Police Department to activate its emergency operations center for the first time since the floods last February. The Sepulveda Basin was closed to traffic and swift-water rescue teams were deployed throughout the area.

In Woodland Hills, a wall of a vacant single-story house in the 4500 block of San Blas Avenue split off and slid down a hill into an empty field Friday morning. No one was injured.

The 1,000-square-foot house was condemned a year ago because of the unstable hillside, said John Hicks of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

In Topanga Canyon, Topanga Creek overflowed its banks Friday afternoon, but no homes were reported in immediate danger. Rocks, mudslides and small waterfalls cascaded down onto roads, and several massive oak trees toppled slowly in the rain-softened earth.

Residents, long accustomed to frequent mudslides and other natural disasters in the rugged area, seemed to take the storm in stride.

Asked if he knew of anyone moving out of the canyon as a precaution, Colin Penno, editor of the Topanga Messenger, said he didn’t. “That would be chicken stuff,” he said.

In northern Los Angeles County, an Agua Dulce recreational vehicle park that was evacuated Wednesday was reopened Friday morning after county crews worked all night to drain a pond behind an earthen dam that threatened to break and pour more water into the flooded park.

But manager Stephanie Kinney said she was urging the park’s 25 residents to spend a third consecutive night with friends or relatives or at a nearby school where the American Red Cross had set up an emergency shelter.

“They might as well stay away until the rain is over, whenever that will be,” Kinney said. “That way, they won’t have to worry about being kicked out at a moment’s notice if it floods again.”

In the Santa Clarita Valley, several canyon roads were closed because of flooding, including parts of Wiley Canyon and Placerita Canyon roads. Rockslides blocked traffic on Vasquez Canyon Road, and traffic was heavy on the southbound Antelope Valley Freeway during rush hour because of local road closures, including a section of Sierra Highway 10 miles north of Santa Clarita used by commuters.

In the Antelope Valley, west of Lancaster, the wall of a catch basin under construction broke Friday, sending 500,000 gallons of water cascading down 70th Street West. There was no damage because no houses were in the path of the rushing water, and the earthen retaining wall of the basin was repaired.

Officials in Santa Barbara County declared a state of emergency Friday because of the flood threat along the Santa Ynez River below Cachuma Reservoir.

The reservoir--down two years ago to 15% of capacity, prompting severe water rationing in the city of Santa Barbara--was full to the brim Friday evening. Officials said water should start pouring over the reservoir dam’s spillways for the first time in a decade, threatening the property of downstream farmers.

A lifeguard pulled a 44-year-old man from Coyote Creek near Long Beach on Friday afternoon, but efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.

Officials said the swift current had swept Lakewood resident Jessie Hernandez downstream for about 2 1/2 miles Friday afternoon before Long Beach lifeguard Paul Wawrzynski grabbed him near Willow Street.

“I ran down the embankment and jumped in. He was face down and unconscious,” Wawrzynski said.

Wawrzynski, holding onto Hernandez and a boogie board, managed to swim to the side of the channel, where paramedics awaited. Hernandez was taken to Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.

How Hernandez ended up in the rain-swollen creek was not immediately determined.

A few minutes later, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Air Support Division had to rescue one of its own from the roiling waters of the Los Angeles River.

An officer, who asked that his name not be used, said Police Lt. Keith Johnson was practicing swift-water rescue techniques on a jet ski when the craft’s engine failed near the Pasadena Freeway overpass.

“He started washing down the river,” the officer said. “We had to use one of our helicopters to pull him out near 4th Street. I don’t know what happened to the jet ski.”

The officer said Johnson apparently was unhurt.

The Los Angeles County Health Department closed most Santa Monica Bay beaches Friday afternoon when a storm-caused sewage spill dumped millions of gallons of partially treated sewage into Ballona Creek.

The beaches, from Topanga Canyon Boulevard south to Malaga Cove near the Palos Verdes Peninsula, had just reopened Monday after a similar sewage spill last week. Both spills occurred because the Hyperion Treatment Plant is undergoing major construction and cannot accommodate drainage from the area’s storm-swollen sewers, according to Bob Hayes, a spokesman for the city Board of Public Works.

Beginning at 1:30 p.m. Friday, partially treated sewage was discharged from the sewer system at a rate of 1 million gallons an hour into the creek, which empties into Santa Monica Bay.

“This was not unexpected,” said Jack Petralia, director of environmental protection for the county Department of Health Services, which ordered the closures. “This happens when it rains a lot.”

But Heal the Bay, an environmental group that monitors the Santa Monica Bay, issued a statement saying that the sewage spill “presents a significant threat to the marine environment and to swimmers.”

“The bay will remain closed to swimmers for the next two to three days,” the group said. “The long-term impact is more difficult to assess.”

The rain snarled weekend getaway traffic in the metropolitan area Friday evening. Freeway lanes were awash in several areas, and a small mudslide blocked one lane of the Pomona Freeway in Monterey Park.

In addition, three large potholes caused closures of freeway lanes Friday night. At least 11 autos were damaged when they hit the potholes, most with flat tires, authorities said.

The transition road from the northbound Santa Ana Freeway to the northbound 605 was closed by the largest pothole. Also closed were the La Brea on-ramp to the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway and a portion of the southbound Golden State Freeway transition to the eastbound Simi Valley Freeway.

In Orange County, the rain caused widespread phone-service problems.

“This is the worst rain damage that we can remember in recent years,” Pacific Bell spokeswoman Linda Bonniksen said. “It’s not that it’s a hard rain, but it just won’t stop. We can’t dry out. We’re really slogging along in this rain, but we’re not getting a break from Mother Nature.”

Bonniksen said the company usually receives about 400 requests a day for service in the county, but on Friday received about 4,500 requests. The continuing rain has seeped well into the ground, she said, interfering with even the most heavily protected cables.

In San Diego County, flooding and mudslides cut several roads and washed out part of a freight rail line between Oceanside and Escondido.

Officials were keeping a close watch on the San Luis Rey River in north San Diego County, where floods wiped out an Oceanside mobile home park late Thursday, leaving seven families homeless.

Rescue workers attached to each other with ropes pulled two people from the flooded Tijuana River, just north of the Mexican border. At least 100 people have been pulled from the river in the last week, and several more are believed to have been swept out to sea to their deaths.

Across the border, residents braced for more flooding after last week’s deluge that left 17 dead and 4,200 people homeless. Guillermo Parra, a spokesman for Tijuana Mayor Hector Osuna, said the city is expecting “intense rains” this weekend and the city had been put on a state of alert for flooding.

Mike Smith, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said the current flood threat was being produced by the interaction of complex weather systems.

By far the largest of these was a vast swath of subtropical moisture that extended almost 3,000 miles Friday night from south of the Hawaiian Islands to Southern California and Baja California. Slightly north of this swath, a large, low-pressure system was spinning slowly off the central California coast.

Within the low-pressure system were three “impulses” of concentrated low pressure, circling slowly around the center of the system in a counter-clockwise direction, officials said.

Smith said that, acting on its own, the swath of subtropical moisture was producing the sort of steady light rain that fell steadily on Southern California on Friday afternoon. He said that as the impulses move onshore, they would collide with the swath, tapping its extensive moisture to produce “very heavy rain.”

The first impulse was due before dawn today, striking mainly at Northern California. Whether it would reach as far south as the Los Angeles Basin was uncertain.

Smith said the second system should hit Southern California tonight; the third sometime late Sunday.

Between midnight and 3 p.m. Friday, 1.07 inches of rain fell at the Los Angeles Civic Center. That raised the season’s total to 14.66 inches, compared to a normal season’s total for the date of 6.2 inches. As of 3 p.m., 9.15 inches of rain had fallen this month at the Civic Center. That meant that just halfway through the month, this was already the fifth-wettest January since officials started keeping records in 1877.

Times staff writers Alicia DiRado, Roxanna Kopetman, Maria LaGanga and Julie Tamaki in Los Angeles, Stacy Wong in Orange County and Chris Kraul in San Diego County contributed to this story.

VALLEY-AREA PHOTOS: B3

The Rain Machine

Several weather systems are dominating the Southland’s weather picture. On Friday night, a layer of deep tropical moisture extended from Hawaii to the mainland. Slightly north, a large, low-pressure system was spinning off the Central California coast. Within the low-pressure system were three “impulses” of concentrated low pressure, producing very heavy rain as they collided with the tropical system. 1. Impulse--Due before dawn today, striking mainly at Northern California. 2. Impulse--Expected to hit Southern California tonight. 3. Impulse--Arriving late Sunday. Source: WeatherData Inc.

A Wet Start to 1993

Southern California is experiencing its fifth-wettest January on record, with 9.15 inches for the month so far, and more than 14 inches total for the season.