What’s in a Name? In This Case, Swamp : Weather: The La Cienega area was hit hard by the downpour earlier this month. New storm drains may provide a long-term solution, but the area could be in trouble again if the rain is heavy this week.

County officials said Wednesday that low-lying streets near La Cienega Boulevard--whose name means the swamp in Spanish--may face more flooding if there is a repeat of the deluge of two weeks ago.

“What happened a few weeks ago was an overwhelming storm that took everyone by surprise,” said Donna Guyovich, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

For the short term, she said, work crews have cleaned out rain gutters to make sure nothing is blocking the flow of runoff rainwater.

“We’ve done all we can do,” she said. “It depends on the intensity of the rain at any one location.”

Long-term, planners are talking about a new storm drain for the area south of Pico Boulevard, which relies on an overtaxed system of reinforced concrete storm drains dating to the 1930s.

In those days, much of the area was planted in beans. Today, with the remaining open ground saturated by weeks of heavy rain and one to three inches more predicted, residents of the downhill end of the old Mexican rancho called Rodeo de los Aguas may be well-advised to park their cars on the street. It wasn’t called round-up of the waters for nothing.

On streets such as Cashio, Alcott, Sawyer, and Guthrie Avenue, underground garages of dozens of buildings were chest-high in water after the downpour of Feb. 7 and 8, which measured more than 5 1/2 inches in a 24-hour period.

Similar problems were reported in southeast Beverly Hills, where some buildings were without gas and electricity for as long as three days.

“The major problem we had was that a lot of electrical panels and gas connections are in subterranean garages or basements, and we were concerned that people were going down there to look at their cars with hot electrical panels and water four feet deep,” said Ron Clark, director of Building and Safety for Beverly Hills.

Although construction of storm drains has disrupted traffic in the nearby Fairfax District for years, that $7-million project will offer only indirect relief to the flood-prone streets off South La Cienega Boulevard, Guyovich said. The collapse of a temporary storm drain at Fairfax Avenue and Sunset Boulevard was quickly fixed, she noted.

Construction of relief drains farther south may cost as much as $2 million, although planners have yet to come up with cost estimates.