3 Houses Destroyed in Laguna Beach Mudslide : Weather: Floodwaters paralyze Camp Pendelton and strand aircraft. Clear skies are forecast for today.

The collapse of a hillside in an affluent Laguna Beach neighborhood sent residents fleeing for their lives early Monday as a series of lethal storms that has battered Southern California for 13 days saved some of its most punishing blows for last.

In Laguna Beach, three hillside homes in an ocean-view neighborhood were destroyed by a mudslide before dawn, including one house that slid off its foundation, crashed 50 feet down a steep ravine and caught fire after it tangled in utility lines.

The storm system that forecasters say is expected to ease up today wreaked havoc throughout the region, increasing the death toll north and south of the border. At Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, “a tidal wave” of floodwaters piled up vehicles and left 70 aircraft in five feet of water.

The San Luis Rey River, usually a trickle, became a destructive torrent that undermined a road and washed cars downriver. Mudslides and rising waters forced evacuations. Millions of gallons of partially treated sewage flowed into Santa Monica Bay for the second day in a row Monday, prompting complaints that city sanitation officials mishandled the opening of a new sewer line serving the Hyperion Treatment Plant. Another spill continued to dump sewage into the ocean off south Orange County.

In Chula Vista, a bolt of lightning killed a San Diego man working at a garbage dump about 11:30 a.m. He is believed to be the seventh person in Southern California killed in the storms.

But the death toll could go higher. A man was feared swept away in the rain-gorged Santa Clara River in a rural area of Antelope Valley on Monday afternoon. He was last seen trying to cross the river near Acton to get to his four-wheel-drive vehicle.

In hard-hit Tijuana, the body of 11-year-old Miguel Angel Torres, who was missing since Jan. 7, was found in a well in the Ejido Mariano Matamoros section. He is the 26th confirmed weather-related fatality in the sprawling border city since the storms began. Two other people are missing and feared drowned.

Driving rain and rising waters continued to compound the misery for Tijuana residents. Of the 5,000 temporarily housed in shelters around the city Monday, more than 25% have lost “their homes, their possessions, everything,” said Gabriel Rosas, a spokesman for the Tijuana mayor’s office. Eighteen neighborhoods in the city have lost drinking water from broken mains ravaged by near nonstop rain.

A Marines Corps spokesman said about 30 Marines and civilians from Camp Pendleton were helped out of rushing floodwaters late Sunday. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported that a mudslide blocked Malibu Canyon Road near Malibu Creek State Park on Monday night. The slide caused an accident in which at least one person was injured.

The furious weather is expected to finally give way to sunshine today, forecasters say, providing public works crews, property owners and the Marine Corps a chance to better assess the multimillion-dollar damage and commence with the cleanup.

Steve Burback, a forecaster with WeatherData Inc., said Southern California should be dry at least until Thursday, when a moderate storm front may bring rain to Ventura County. That front should spare most of the region, he said.

By 4 p.m. Monday, more than 11.2 inches of rain had been recorded at Los Angeles Civic Center over a 13-day period since Jan. 6--more than triple the normal precipitation for the full month of January.

In many places the Southland’s terrain gave in to the deluge. Saturated hillsides collapsed and streams overflowed their banks.

No one was seriously injured in the Laguna Beach slide and fire, to the amazement of officials who temporarily evacuated about 100 people from the neighborhood. A teen-ager suffered minor cuts on his foot as he tried to escape the crumbling house of a friend.

The house that caught fire, in the scenic Mystic Hills neighborhood overlooking downtown Laguna Beach, apparently was unoccupied when it tumbled down the slope and tangled in utility lines about 4:45 a.m. Monday. The owner, who was not identified by police, apparently was in San Francisco at the time.

Next door on Mystic Lane, two adults and four youngsters managed to scramble out a window minutes before the two-story house slid about 10 feet down the slope and buckled. Thomas Hitzel, who barely escaped from his home with his family, said the slide came abruptly about 4:15 a.m.

“I started hearing popping noises. My wife said: ‘Oh, it’s just routine creaking,’ but I said: ‘Let’s get the kids out,’ ” said Hitzel, 45, a vice president at Avco Financial Services in Irvine.

Hitzel, his wife, Gayla, their son Ryan, 15, daughter Keleen, 9, and two teen-age boys who were sleeping over threw clothes on and at first tried to escape out the front door. But the house had started to collapse and the door was jammed, so they climbed out a window in the boy’s bedroom instead. Some of them were barefoot, and a police officer and firefighter helped them over the buckled road.

“You could feel popping vibrations under your feet,” Keleen said.

Within minutes after their escape, their house slid away from the retaining wall by about 20 feet and down the muddy slope about 10 feet. It buckled, smashing windows and cracking walls and the garage door.

A neighboring house also suffered substantial slide damage and was rendered uninhabitable. The residents escaped unharmed. Damage to the three homes was estimated at $2 million.

A city-hired geologist who surveyed the damage said it appeared that the hillside’s bedrock layers could not hold up under the stress of soils saturated by weeks of heavy rainfall.

The spectacular fire spewed huge billowing clouds of smoke for hours, despite heavy morning rains, as utility crews struggled to shut off damaged gas lines. Laguna Beach fire officials said the blaze was caused by broken gas lines that ignited.

Officer Debbie Cantrella, the first officer on the scene, was responding to a call from a woman who said her house was collapsing when she saw Mystic Lane buckle in front of her as she drove. At first, Cantrella said, she thought that it might be an earthquake.

Residents in hilly portions of Laguna Beach are familiar with mudslides, although the last major one was more than a decade ago. In October, 1978, about 60 homes were destroyed or damaged in steep Bluebird Canyon, about a mile away from Mystic Canyon, when the hillside gave way. Although it was dry at the time, officials speculated that it was caused by heavy rains the winter before. Also, in February, 1980, three homes in Arch Beach Heights, on Gainsborough Street and Del Mar Avenue in the southern end of the city, were destroyed by slides after heavy rains.

The hillside disaster in Laguna Beach was just one of several problems in Orange County.

About 40 families in the rain-soaked Anaheim Hills were asked to evacuate Monday evening because houses were slipping and cracking and possibly on the verge of sliding down a canyon.

By late Monday afternoon, three houses in Anaheim Hills had suffered structural damage, and streets and sidewalks in the area had buckled and cracked. Several houses on Avenida de Santiago were in danger of sliding off a bluff onto streets about 100 feet below, officials said.

In addition, one of the worst sewage spills in Orange County history continued unabated Monday in Mission Viejo. After a 3 a.m. landslide Monday, a sewer line in Oso Creek ruptured and began leaking 2 million gallons of sewage. Oso Creek flows into the ocean at Doheny State Beach, which has been closed because of the sewage.

Shortly after noon Monday, a small cyclone twisted through the Huntington By the Sea trailer park in Huntington Beach, uprooting and then crumpling two carports.

In San Diego County, damage was heaviest at Camp Pendleton, where the fast-flowing Santa Margarita River overflowed its banks, leaving about 70 high-priced aircraft in about five feet of water.

The incessant rain paralyzed the giant base and its airfield, which lies on a flood plain created centuries ago by the Santa Margarita River. On Monday, dozens of vehicles, military and private, were strewn about the base and piled atop each other by the rushing water. Other vehicles were stranded or abandoned in up to four feet of water.

Sgt. John Farrell said the base, which usually has a population of 50,000 Marines, dependents and civilian workers, will be closed until further notice to everyone except Marines and civilian workers considered essential.

“Those Marines who are considered essential are being called today to report to work on Tuesday,” Farrell said.

Farrell said Marine officials will not be able to calculate the extent of the damage until the water recedes.

Col. Mike Glynn, commanding officer of the airfield, said Marines do not know the extent of the damage to the aircraft, which included AH-1 Cobra gunships, UH-1 Huey transports and OV-10 Bronco observation planes.

It appeared that the aircraft suffered little structural damage, but Glynn said the rushing river has made it impossible for maintenance crews to get to the aircraft to inspect them. At least 36 were on the flight line when the flooding began Saturday, he said.

Witnesses said the normally shallow river became a rushing torrent and swept through the base Saturday about 8 p.m., catching Marines off guard. On Monday, civilian construction crews were busy dumping tons of rocks and boulders into the river to divert the fast-moving waters away from the airfield and the base commanding general’s home.

Lt. Col. Tony Anthony, the base deputy provost marshal, said that about 30 people, including Marines and civilians, were rescued from the raging water Saturday night. Marine rescue crews had to use helicopters and amphibious vehicles to perform the rescues.

Two bridges spanning the Santa Margarita River and leading to the camp were washed away. The camp, on the west side of the river, is home to the 3rd Battalion 9th Marine Regiment, which was deployed to Somalia last month. The battalion is scheduled to begin returning to Camp Pendleton today.

Weather-related damage in the San Diego area was put at $36 million Monday by the county Office of Disaster Preparedness, which noted that five of the county’s reservoirs were overflowing by 4 p.m. Monday.

The lightning victim was identified by San Diego County authorities as Juan Antonio Valdez, 31. A Sheriff’s Department spokesman said Valdez was digging a trench to drain water from a flooded dump when he was struck about 12:30 p.m.

In Temecula, rescue workers were searching for the body of a 3 1/2-week-old boy who was presumed to have washed downstream into Murrieta Creek after his family’s truck overturned last weekend in swiftly moving rising waters.

The truck was found in a ravine Sunday morning, with the bodies of Victor Arellanes, 31, and his wife, Faustina Martha Arellanes, 20, 3-year-old Martha Yarely Arellanes, and friend Margaro Banos, 26, inside.

Under gray skies and threat of more rain Monday, about 170 people returned to their homes in Temecula after spending the night at a Red Cross emergency shelter at Temecula Valley High School.

A disaster assessment team from Sacramento was touring the town Monday, gathering information for a report to the governor. City officials estimated damage at about $1 million.

South of the border, Tijuana was virtually paralyzed by driving rains and flooded streets. The city appealed to residents to keep their vehicles home. The ground is so saturated and the drainage system so overloaded that each rainfall now causes major flooding in the city, officials said.

A mother and son were reported still missing Monday after being swept down the Tijuana River on Sunday morning after jumping from a bridge to avoid an oncoming train.

Contributing to this story were David Colker and Aaron Curtiss in Los Angeles, Fred Alvarez in Ventura County, Leslie Berkman, Gregory Crouch, Lily Dizon and David Lesher in Orange County and Mike Granberry, Chris Kraul and H.G. Reza in San Diego County. Cone reported from Orange County and Harris from Los Angeles.

SEWAGE SPILL: Millions of gallons of partially treated sewage flowed into Santa Monica Bay for a second day. B1