O.C. Soaked, Sliding in Storms’ Wake : Weather: Mudslides, tornadoes and flooding cause widespread damage from coast to mountains.

Three hillside homes in an affluent, oceanview neighborhood were destroyed by a sudden mudslide before dawn Monday, including one house that slipped off its foundation and crashed 50 feet down a steep ravine before bursting into flames.

Monday’s deluge spawned even more destruction from the coast to the mountains:

* The largest sewage spill in the county since 1981 was triggered in Mission Viejo after a 3 a.m. landslide ruptured a large sewer line. About 2 million gallons of raw sewage surged into Oso Creek, which eventually reaches the ocean at Doheny State Beach. The spill was expected to continue for three days.

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

* A small cyclone touched down in Huntington Beach, uprooting and crumbling two carports at the Huntington-by-the-Sea trailer park on Pacific Coast Highway.

* Elsewhere in Orange County, houses were in peril in Modjeska Canyon and San Clemente, where late last night several families were evacuated.

* In Southern California, the death toll from the storms grew to seven, and flood damage was especially severe at Camp Pendleton and in Temecula. Just over the border in Tijuana, the city was paralyzed by driving rains and flooded streets.

In Orange County, storm damage since Thursday totals at least $15 million and is expected to soar once city halls, closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, file complete reports. The County Board of Supervisors, which declared a local emergency on Friday, appealed to Gov. Pete Wilson to declare a state emergency in the county so special low-interest funds would be available. Late Monday Wilson had not yet made up his mind.

To the amazement of emergency officials, no one was killed or seriously injured in any of the Orange County incidents, including the slide and fire in the Laguna Beach hillside neighborhood, where about 100 people were temporarily evacuated Monday morning.

Saturated Soil

Three houses on Mystic Lane in the scenic Mystic Hills neighborhood overlooking downtown Laguna Beach were condemned Monday after sliding into a muddy canyon.

A 1,000-square-foot, three-bedroom house that burned apparently was unoccupied when it tumbled, tangled in utility lines, down the slope at about 4:45 a.m. Monday. Its owner apparently was in San Francisco.

Next door, Thomas and Gayla Hitzel and four youngsters managed to scramble out a bedroom window minutes before their large, two-story house on Mystic Lane slid about 10 feet down the slope and buckled, accordion-style. The custom-built house was only 6 years old.

The Hansen family, which owns the third house, also escaped unharmed as their home suffered substantial slide damage. It dropped six feet and tilted toward the canyon.

Damage to the three homes was estimated by fire officials at $2 million. City officials, who surveyed nearby houses and said the rest of the neighborhood is safe, allowed people to return home by 9 a.m.

Geologists said it appeared that the hillside’s soil structure just couldn’t support the saturation from two weeks of rain.

Longtime Laguna Beach geologist Fred Pratley said the mudslide appears to be the result of improper grading and fill in an area known to have high slide potential. A 1931 aerial map of the city shows the neighborhood apparently was the site of a previous landslide, he said.

The burning house spewed huge billowing clouds of smoke for hours, despite heavy morning rains, as utility crews struggled to shut off damaged gas and electric lines. Fire officials said the explosion was caused by broken gas lines.

Thomas Hitzel, who barely escaped from his home with his family, said the slide started abruptly at 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 Kelly, 9, and two visiting teen-agers quickly threw on clothes and at first tried to escape out the front door. But the door was jammed, so they all climbed out a bedroom window instead.

They said that it was pitch black outside and a police officer and fireman helped the barefoot family cross the buckled road to safety. “You could feel popping vibrations under your feet,” Kelly Hitzel said.

Within a few minutes of their escape, their house pulled away from its retaining wall by about 20 feet and slid about 10 feet down the muddy slope. The house buckled, smashing windows and cracking walls and the garage door.

Police Officer Debbie Cantrella, who was answering a flooding call on Mystic Lane, saw the road buckle and thought it was an earthquake.

“The street right in front of us popped and that house started sliding. People started leaping out of a bedroom window. It was a bunch of teen-age boys, young kids. We started pulling them out over the street as it was caving in,” she said. “They knew they were running for their lives.”

Cantrella said she was amazed by the suddenness of the collapse. She described the sounds of the crashing houses as “eerie.”

“It made a lot of noise, windows shattering. It sounded like the whole thing was going to go,” she said.

After her family escaped, Gayla Hitzel ran to a neighbor’s house. “We heard her pounding on our garage door asking for help,” said Jerry Thompson. “They are pretty traumatized.”

The Hitzels returned to the house to recover their dog, who they found safe in a bathroom.

On Monday morning, the Hitzels, dazed and solemn, stood in the pouring rain under a broken umbrella, staring at their crippled house. The large gray home with blue trim was worth about $750,000 and had a panoramic view of the ocean.

“I’m stunned. We’re all stunned,” Thomas Hitzel said. “You just thank God for a good police department and fire department.”

Mudslides in the hilly portions of this coastal town are not uncommon, although the last major one happened more than a decade ago.

In October, 1978, about 60 homes were destroyed or damaged in steep Bluebird Canyon, about a mile away. Officials at the time speculated that the slide was caused by heavy rains the winter before.

“The ghost that stalks (Mystic Hills) is Bluebird,” said Gregory Benford, a UC Irvine professor who lives in Mystic Hills, as he recalled how the disastrous slide in Bluebird Canyon progressed gradually. “The whole neighborhood was slowly chewed to pieces and destroyed.”

Mystic Hills residents said they didn’t know their area is so vulnerable.

“We’ve lived up here for 19 years, and we’ve never seen a slide of any kind,” said William Garman, who lives on Vista Lane, directly across the ravine from Mystic Lane.

Don Terres, a geologist with Leighton and Associates, said the canyon where Monday’s slide occurred is similar to Bluebird Canyon, although the slide area is much smaller. The “layering of the bedrock materials” is similar, he said, and the layers were lubricated by the ongoing rainfall.

Although residents in the area returned to their homes, it is possible houses above the slide have become less stable, Terres said.

Mayor Lida Lenney, who came to Mystic Lane to view the damage, called it “a disaster. How do you ever begin to explain this?”

The owner of the house destroyed by fire, Vida Marija Kucenas, is reportedly an artist who lives in Laguna Beach and San Francisco.

Except for a large wood porch, nothing was left of her 35-year-old, three-bedroom house, which was turned into a pile of charred, smoldering wood. The garage, however, somehow remained in place, although the roof caved in on a Cadillac inside.

For hours, unstable ground kept firefighters from reaching the burning house to make sure Kucenas had not been trapped inside. It wasn’t until early afternoon that they confirmed that she was not inside.

“There were just a few sparks, we thought it was an electrical cord or something,” Marcia Finley, 55, recalled as she watched the smoldering remains of her neighbor’s house. “And then you could see a glow coming from the inside of the house.”

The smell of gas still filled the area hours later as Southern California Gas Co. crews tried to find and shut off the broken lines.

“We evacuated the entire neighborhood because we weren’t sure of the stability of the slope above. It was pitch black out,” Police Sgt. Greg Bartz said.

A few hours later, however, people were allowed to return, although some came back only to pack up their valuables and leave.

Although the Garmans, who live nearby, were told it was safe to remain, they packed valuables and moved for at least one night to the Hotel Laguna.

“The Fire Department told us it might be another Bluebird Canyon,” Marilyn Garman said.

“I was born in California, and in my life I haven’t seen this much rainfall,” she said. “I tell you, when you live in the foothills, it’s one thing after another. But deer getting in our trash cans is much better than this.”

Claes Andersen, who owns the Hotel Laguna, a famed landmark in Laguna Beach, his wife, Georgia, and 4-year-old son Stefan, were awakened in their Vista Lane house and told to evacuate. When they returned, they found no damage.

“You get kind of used to living up in the hills,” added Georgia Andersen. “But you always have it in your mind that this might happen.”

County officials closed beaches and began posting “No Bathing” signs from Dana Point to Avenida Pico in San Clemente after the rains caused Orange County’s worst sewage spill in more than a decade. The park at Doheny State Beach remains open, but the beach, a popular surfing site, will remain closed for at least several days.

Raw sewage began leaking into Oso Creek at about 3 a.m. Monday in Mission Viejo after a landslide severed an 18-inch sewage pipe.

Two million gallons of raw sewage are leaking into Oso Creek every 24 hours, according to Bob Reagan of the Santa Margarita Water District.

Officials hope to fix the break within the next three days. Because of the rain, the site--which is south of Jeronimo Road and east of Marguerite Parkway--is considered too unstable for repair work.

“We hope to have the flow shut off within 72 hours, and we will begin repairs after that,” said Reagan.

The spill appears to be the worst release of raw sewage since a 6-million-gallon leak into Newport Harbor in March, 1981.

“This kind of a problem is classic along today’s coast,” said Jake Rubb, executive director of Surfrider Foundation, a national surfing/environmental group.

Oso Creek is a freshwater wetland that provides rare habitat for fish and birds, but no injured wildlife was reported. It flows into San Juan Creek and then into the ocean at Doheny.

“Any time you’re dealing with valuable coastal resources that affect water quality and sensitive habitat, a raw sewage spill could be extremely damaging. It would be our hope that the sewage line break would be remedied as soon as possible,” said Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney with the Los Angeles office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group.

The mouth of the creek is often clogged with sand. But on Monday it was about 200 feet wide and filled with brown, turbulent water.

County health officials said they will begin taking ocean water samples today.

Larry Honeybourne, a county environmental health engineering specialist, warned that raw sewage can contain infectious viruses such as hepatitis.

Veteran lifeguard Mike Brousard and state park ranger Brad Barker were aghast to see a surfer in the waves and used a loudspeaker to call him out “immediately.”

“Oh man,” said the surfer, Danny Minton, 33, of Dana Point. “I didn’t know raw sewage was in here. I’ve got to go home and get in the shower.”

Families Evacuated

By late Monday afternoon, three houses in Anaheim Hills had already 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.

Anaheim Fire Department Division Chief Steve Magliocco said the evacuation of about 40 families starting at 1:30 p.m. was voluntary, but most people were leaving.

“We have to assume the worst,” Magliocco said. “We would rather . . . have everybody out and safe.”

The evacuated streets included Avenida de Santiago and Burlwood, Rimwood and Leafwood drives, Pegasus Street and Georgetown Circle. Some homes in the neighborhood are valued at $1 million.

City officials were aware six months ago that there was a potential slide problem in the area, said Natalie Lockman of the Department of Public Works.

Lockman said the slide area had been dormant for 15 million years and became active last summer, slipping about an inch. In the past three days, however, the area has slid another three inches.

Lockman said city officials did not know why the slide area became active, but some speculate that underground water table has changed.

“We’ve had few problem up until now, but what has happened is that the rain has accelerated the slide,” Lockman said, adding that the city has geologists studying the area to determine what can be done.

She said the “fissure is so big that there are no quick fixes,” Lockman said.

Several Anaheim Hills residents sharply criticized the city for knowing about the slide problem and not doing enough to correct it.

“The city has known for about six months that this was going to happen,” said Sandra Steiner, a resident of Anaheim Hills. “I’ve called the city on several occasions to find out was happening.”

Robert Heck, a maintenance contractor who lives on the corner of Burlwood and Rimwood, said the city is “being very vague because they don’t want to put any fault on themselves. That’s (ticking) everyone off up here. . . . The house values are nil right now. We couldn’t sell if we wanted to.”

Mike Bradshaw said he was not going to evacuate his home on Avenida de Santiago.

With his 5-year-old daughter Natalie standing by his side, Bradshaw held up a sign saying: “We stay.” Even though he said his family would not evacuate, he conceded that he, his wife and their two children would be sleeping downstairs near the front door.

“If I felt anything moving, there would be two Mercedeses out of the driveway,” Bradshaw said. “It would be like Mario Andretti driving.”

Tornado Strikes

Shortly after noon, a small cyclone twisted through a Huntington Beach mobile home park, damaging roofs and crushing several carports, but injuring no one.

Fire officials estimated the damage at Huntington-by-the-Sea mobile home park at about $9,300.

Malinda Cook and her 8-year-old daughter Rachel were watching the downpour when they saw a sheet of metal flying through the air.

Cook grabbed Rachel and the two dashed into the bathroom.

“I saw that piece of metal and that was all it took,” said Cook, 31. “We just ran to the bathtub and sat in there and started to hear all the noise banging outside.”

Once the tornado was gone, Cook discovered that it had overturned the carport and dumped it in the back yard.

Down the street, Kathy Vanags, 32, found the roof of her carport on top of her neighbor’s home. The carport roof had toppled the mobile home’s television antenna.

“I’m glad I wasn’t home,” said Vanags. “I’ve never been through a tornado, and after what I’ve seen it did to my carport, (I) don’t ever want to be in one.”

Elsewhere in O.C.

In San Clemente, at least seven hillside homes and businesses were threatened Monday night with collapse, Police Sgt. Richard Downing said.

These included several homes off Camino Capistrano near Pacific Coast Highway and another in the 200 block of Avenida San Antonio. An apartment building was evacuated in the 200 block of Avenida Palizada, near Interstate 5 because it was in danger of slipping into a canyon. A shop in an industrial area in the 1500 block of Avenida Estrella also appeared ready to drop into a ravine, Downing said.

Several houses in Modjeska Canyon also continued to slide. One house there was destroyed and three others were evacuated.

In Santiago Canyon, three horses had to be rescued from an equestrian center after a hillside collapsed and destroyed a section of their stable, said Orange County Fire Capt. Rod George.

When firefighters arrived at the Santiago Equestrian Center about 2:30 p.m., two of the horses were lying on their sides, stuck in the muck and debris of the stables, and the other was standing but trapped inside a stall, George said. After nearly two hours of digging, some of it by hand, the horses were freed with only minor cuts and scratches, he said.

“Horses don’t like to be lying down like this . . . ,” George said. “They were pretty scared, so we had to call a vet in to sedate them.”

Other Damage

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 under water.

The incessant rain paralyzed the giant base. On Monday, dozens of vehicles, both 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 normally has a population of 50,000 Marines, dependents and civilian workers, will be closed until further notice to everyone except Marines and essential civilian workers.

Marines still 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.

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.

In Chula Vista, a bolt of lightning killed a man at a garbage dump. He is believed to be the seventh person in Southern California to be killed in the storms.

South of the border, Tijuana was virtually paralyzed, and 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.

With 26 people known dead, a mother and son were reported still missing Monday after being swept down the Tijuana River Sunday morning.

Times staff writers David A. Avila, Susan Christian, Marla Cone, Gregory Crouch, Lily Dizon, Catherine Gewertz, Len Hall, Scott Harris, Matt Lait, Mark Landsbaum, Phong Le, Dave Lesher, Mark Pinsky, Otto Strong, Jodi Wilgoren and Stacy Wong contributed to these reports, along with Times librarian Val Tkach and correspondents Debra Cano, Anna Cekola, Willson Cummer, Bob Elston, Shelby Grad and Terry Spencer.

More Storm Coverage

Lives washed away: Friends recall a family that was swept away by floodwaters in Temecula. A3

Nature’s fury: What causes mudslides, tornadoes and hail? A14

Cleanup time: All over Orange County, families were cleaning up after water and wind damage. B1

Treacherous roads: New, bigger potholes. B1

Understanding Nature’s Wrath

Storms have overwhelmed Orange County, not only with several more inches of rain but also with mudslides, tornadoes and hail.

Mudslides

The coastal foothills from Laguna Beach to San Clemente are more susceptible to mudslides because of their geological composition.

1) Porous shale: (25 to 37 inches) When saturated, breaks apart and slips off bedrock.

2) Bedrock: (37 inches and deeper) Very hard layer of soil can also break, further destabilizing the shale layer.

3) Topsoil: (Up to 25 inches) Sticky, clay-like mixture slides downhill with shale layer, pulling with it homes, pools, trees, fencing.

Safety Tips

Check for large cracks in yard or street.

Empty swimming pools to relieve weight on hill.

Brace exterior walls and fencing with sandbags.

Cover hillside with plastic, then sandbags.

If there is any sign of slippage, shut off water and gas mains; leave home immediately.

*

Tornadoes

Tornadoes travel very quickly, at about 20 m.p.h. They are hard to predict because scientists do not understand precisely why tornadoes form. But generally this is how they develop:

1) Cool, dry air from the north merges with a front of warm, humid air.

2) As the two fronts collide, warm air rises rapidly into the cold front.

3) As more warm air is pulled in, it begins to spin.

Safety Tips

Have flashlight, batteries and first-aid kit on hand.

Stay indoors; go to lowest floor. Stay away from windows and glass.

Leave mobile homes. If you’re in a vehicle, park under a freeway overpass and crawl into a ditch.

American Red Cross Tornado Hot Line: (714) 835-5381.

*

Hail

Hail is round or irregularly shaped ice, ranging from the size of a pea to the size of an orange.

1) In thunderstorm clouds where the temperature is below freezing, frozen raindrops come into contact with droplets of rain that have yet to freeze.

2) Hailstones grow in size as more water freezes on their surfaces.

3) Hailstones fall at speeds of 22 m.p.h. or faster.

Safety Tips

If caught in a hailstorm, stay indoors.

If driving, pull over and park inside garage or covered lot.

Sources: American Red Cross, U.S. Department of Agriculture, World Book Encyclopedia

Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times