Flood Alerts Issued as Storms Drench 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 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 five inches of rain by Sunday night in the 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 Flood Basin was closed to traffic and swift-water rescue teams were deployed throughout the area.

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.

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

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 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 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 in the mishap.

In Montebello, about 100 residents were ordered from their homes Friday night when the hillside above their apartments began to slide, authorities said. Montebello police evacuated residents from about 36 apartments in three buildings in the 700 block of Via Altamira, near the Montebello Municipal Golf Course.

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 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 storm-swollen sewers, said 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 a 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.”

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

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 Vazquez Canyon Road.

The rain snarled weekend getaway traffic in the metropolitan area Friday evening. Freeway lanes were awash in several areas, and a small mudslide blocked an on-ramp of the Pomona Freeway in Montebello.

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,” said Pacific Bell spokeswoman Linda Bonniksen. “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.

Across the border, residents braced for more possible 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 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 counterclockwise direction, officials said.

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

The first impulse was due in 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 4 p.m. Friday, 1.07 inches of rain fell at the Los Angeles Civic Center. That raised the season’s total to 14.67 inches, compared to a normal season’s total for the date of 6.2 inches. As of 3 p.m., 9.16 inches of rain had fallen this month at the Civic Center. That meant that just halfway through the month, this is the fifth wettest January since officials started keeping records in 1877.

Times staff writers Alicia DiRado, Tracey Kaplan, Roxana Kopetman, Maria L. La Ganga, Nieson Himmel and Julie Tamaki in Los Angeles, Stacy Wong in Orange County and Chris Kraul in San Diego County contributed to this story.

WATERLOGGED: Businesses--especially outdoor tourist attractions--are being hurt by the storms. D1

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.