Damage in O.C. Minor as Storm Pounds Southland

Southern California--already soaked, battered and reeling from pre-dawn downpours--was hammered again by heavy rain Friday night as the main body of a tenacious, wind-swept storm moved onshore.

Gov. Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles County as forecasters warned that there could be more flood damage here by this morning.

At least four people have been killed in the continuing storm. A Marine and a teen-age girl were fatally injured in separate traffic accidents on rain-slick pavement, and a woman and a boy died in a fire that started after she lighted candles to illuminate their apartment during a power failure.

Damage in Orange County was relatively minor.

The storm caused a 1 /2-hour power outage to 4,000 thousand San Clemente residents late Thursday night, and continued to wreak havoc on motorists, who were forced at times to drive in near zero-visibility conditions during the intermittent heavy rain Friday.

Damage reportedly caused by lightning forced the cancellation of today’s OP Wintersurf Pro surfing championships. Security guards for the competition said a bolt of lightning struck a judging tower that had been set up on the beach just south of the Huntington Beach Pier on Friday evening.

“For safety reasons, we decided to cancel the event,” said Judy Horton, marketing and event coordinator for championships.

Heavy rain flooded several roads in the Orange Park Acres, an unincorporated community next to the city of Orange, and was also cited as a factor in a Friday morning six-car pileup on the Riverside Freeway that injured one motorist.

Orange County residents can expect scattered showers and breezy winds to continue through Sunday, said Steve Burback, a meteorologist with WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times. Another storm is expected to arrive sometime Monday, Burback added, but will probably be less powerful than the current storm.

In Anaheim Hills, where dozens of homes damaged by a landslide were evacuated during last month’s storms, no further damage was reported from Friday’s rain.

In other Southland areas, cars and trucks were buried to their rooftops in mud and motorists had to be pulled to safety Friday morning when overflowing creeks chewed through roadways, flooded intersections and swallowed up bridges, cutting off dozens of rural homes. Runoff flooded a wide area of the desert community of Hesperia, where officials called for the evacuation of more than 100 houses.

Houses teetered on slumping hillsides in Mt. Washington and Pacific Palisades as more rain threatened to produce more mudslides.

Some freeways--awash in up to three feet of water that stranded morning rush-hour commuters in traffic jams that backed up for miles--slowed again during the evening rush hour as the heavy rain resumed.

A winter storm watch was issued for the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains Friday night as heavy snow began to fall above 5,000 feet. Officials said as much as 18 inches of snow could fall there by tonight.

The governor’s order added Los Angeles and Alpine counties to the list of 22 counties and three cities with state of emergency proclamations stemming from recent storms. The city of Los Angeles was placed on the list earlier. The proclamations pave the way for federal assistance.

Flames started by candles swept through a two-story apartment at 1101 W. 107th St. early Friday, claiming the lives of a 28-year-old woman and a 3-year-old boy and critically burning an 8-year-old girl, Los Angeles County fire officials said. The three victims, who were the only occupants of the apartment, were not identified.

“There was a power outage, and the people were using the candles for light,” said Fire Inspector Larry Burke. “Some (Southern California) Edison workers saw the fire and tried to rescue the people but were unable to do so.”

Burke said the three victims were found in a second-floor bathroom and bedroom. He said a smoke detector wired to the building’s electrical system apparently failed to go off, possibly because it had no battery backup.

An Edison spokesman said electrical service was cut to about 30 customers in the area an hour before the fire when a tree toppled onto a power line. Officials said 72,000 Edison and Department of Water and Power customers in the Los Angeles Basin were hit by storm-related power outages late Thursday and early Friday.

A 17-year-old Porterville girl was killed when a car in which she was riding spun out of control on the Golden State Freeway in Santa Clarita and slammed into a parked car. Her name was withheld pending notification of relatives.

The Marine, 33, was killed when a downpour caused him to lose control of his car and collide head-on with a van in West Covina, police said.

The serviceman, who was not identified, was based at the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro, police said. The driver of the van, Charlee Meechukant, 47, was reported in critical condition at Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina.

Four people were rescued from floodwaters and hundreds more residents were stranded or forced to use circuitous detours when roads washed out early Friday in parts of the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, authorities said.

Most damage was along a 10-mile stretch of Sierra Highway between Canyon Country and Agua Dulce. The entire stretch was closed Friday and residents of as many as 300 homes were cut off. The highway probably will not be reopened for days, officials said.

Three men were rescued after their truck mired in a flooded area north of Canyon Country, a Los Angeles County Fire Department official said. Richard Haley, 47, Tim Rymer, 21, and Steve Rymer, 23, all of Canyon Country, climbed atop their truck to await help from a swift-water rescue team, which used ropes to pull them to safety about 2 a.m.

A motorist who said he had ignored barricades and warning signs was stranded for three hours when his car stalled in deep runoff in Palmdale, sheriff’s deputies said.

Rescue workers pulled Clifford Wilson, 55, to safety, but not before they had to abandon a four-wheel-drive vehicle that became submerged in the floodwaters.

Several homes were threatened by floodwaters in Palmdale, and firefighters helped with sandbagging around submerged intersections in Lancaster and Quartz Hill.

Hesperia Fire Chief Robert Wray called for the evacuation of about 150 homes as floodwaters continued to rise Friday afternoon. Wray warned that “if they don’t leave now, they could be stranded later.” At least 40 roads in the area were blocked by runoff water.

Officials in Riverside County’s Lake Elsinore declared a state of emergency as the lake that fronts the city crept to within six feet of several homes. Residents stacked sandbags along the waterfront and prepared to evacuate.

In Los Angeles, sandbags lined winding lanes in the Pacific Palisades area, where overnight mudslides broke a water main and caused a row of hillside homes on Castellammare Drive to slide three feet downhill. Several homes had been evacuated because of damage during last month’s storms.

The new rains ripped a hole in Porto Marina Way and broke a bluff-top retaining wall, leaving bed-sized chunks of concrete and pavement perched 200 feet above Pacific Coast Highway.

Micaela Brazina fretted that she and her husband may have to abandon their two-story home.

“This is our dream house. It used to be a place we came to at the end of the day for solace. Now it’s a war zone,” Brazina said. “Our lives have been scooped up and shaken up, and we don’t know where we’re going to land.”

Across the street, an evacuated home sank three feet below street level. A gash in the earth separated it from another house--still in place--that Vince Caruso is renting while preparing to rebuild a home he owns nearby. He is sticking to that plan, which includes sinking massive pilings into the rock below for support.

“I’m an optimist,” Caruso said.

In Mt. Washington, the rain continued to gnaw at the back yards and patios of three hillside homes on Pheasant Drive, where trees and large clumps of earth slid down a hill into the cul-de-sac below. The garage of a home was tilted precariously by the dirt and stones piled against it.

As a Los Angeles Conservation Corps crew secured strips of plastic sheeting with sandbags to protect the slope from further erosion, Carol Corrigan stood on the second-floor balcony of her two-story home and pointed to the damage.

“The ground right there was level with the deck,” she said, pointing to a six-foot-wide ditch next to the wooden platform below.

The house to the north was vacated during last month’s rains when its cesspool slid down the hill and into her yard, Corrigan said.

The state Conservation Corps set up a base camp at a park in Northridge, deploying teams that helped with sandbagging and anti-erosion efforts in Venice, Thousand Oaks and Studio City.

Classes at California Polytechnic University in Pomona were canceled because of widespread flooding.

The rising Tijuana River washed away a road through a semirural section of San Diego near the U.S.-Mexico border, cutting off 60 residents.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Tim Chou, Ken Ellingwood, Jonathan Gaw, Josh Meyer, Edmund Newton, Julie Tamaki, Vicki Torres and Jim Herron Zamora in Los Angeles County, Timothy Chou in Orange County and Sebastian Rotella in San Diego County.

RELATED STORIES: A18, D1

Rainfall Roundup

Here’s a look at the rain that fell around the county in a 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. Friday. Season rainfall totals are based on gauges established in Santa Ana. Season to date: 19.52 Last season to date: 9.78 Season norm to date: 8.52

City/Area Rainfall in inches Santiago Peak 4.61 Silverado Canyon 2.13 El Toro 1.43 Modjeska Canyon 1.26 Brea 1.10 Fullerton 0.98 Irvine 0.83 Anaheim 0.71 Santa Ana 0.65 Corona del Mar 0.63 Seal Beach 0.59 Huntington Beach 0.35 San Juan Capistrano 0.28 Laguna Beach 0.08 San Clemente 0.08

Source: Weather Data Inc., Orange County Environmental Management Agency