Laguna, Malibu Hit by Mudslides : Weather: Season’s first storm brings little rain, but sends scorched hillsides tumbling. Hard winter is feared.

With the fires barely ended, the first rains of the season hit Southern California on Thursday, sending mudslides washing out of the burned-out hills, damaging houses, carrying away cars and raising fears that this is just the beginning of a long and destructive winter.

Hardest hit by far was the Orange County coastal community of Laguna Beach, where the slides sent a wave of dirt, rocks and debris through the streets, damaged two dozen homes and a number of cars and caused the closure of Laguna Canyon Road.

In Malibu, where fires raced through the canyons from Calabasas last week, a mudslide shut down all but one lane of Pacific Coast Highway, as residents filled sandbags in anticipation of the next round of slides. The mud and debris on the highway took work crews about six hours to clear.

Topanga Canyon residents collected thousands of empty sandbags from county fire department stations to build walls against the waves of muck they fear will sweep down denuded hillsides.

The damage was produced by relatively little rain--between a quarter-inch and a half-inch in most areas.

A second coastal storm system, carrying a 60% chance of rain, is expected to move into Southern California this morning. Slide experts say the rains may be the opening salvo of a perilous season. The brush fires that raged out of control for almost two weeks, taking three lives and destroying more than 1,100 structures, burned vegetation off more than 200,000 acres in six counties. The denuded hills--where reseeding began only a few days ago--are ripe for mudslides because there are no plants to shield the dirt from the rain’s impact or roots to hold the dirt in place.

“This winter has a tremendous potential for disaster,” said Douglas Hammond, chairman of the USC geological sciences department. “The more cover that can be grown out there, the better. There’s not a lot we can do about the rain.”

Terry Huff, an agent with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service, also expressed great concern, especially after a helicopter survey Wednesday of the area burned in the Calabasas/Malibu fire.

“We’re concerned because of the extent of the burn,” Huff said. “The hydrology has changed significantly and we expect some major water flows down the canyons to the ocean.”

Huff said the extreme heat of the fire had also increased the possibility of landslides because rainwater cannot penetrate as deeply into the soil. The fire caused minerals and organic materials to fuse, creating a natural catch basin for water to collect, then start moving downhill, he said.

In Laguna Beach, as many as 25 houses suffered some damage Thursday morning, officials said, and three homes were flooded with muck as deep as five feet in some rooms. Although no one was injured, dozens of people fled their neighborhoods.

Even as residents and city officials sought to clean up the mess, they carted out sandbags and braced for more rains.

“Right now, we don’t need any rain of any degree,” Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr. said.

In Topanga Canyon, residents poured into Fire Station 69 Thursday morning in search of sandbags, and firefighters handed out nearly 2,000 of the 5,000 small nylon bags they had on hand.

“They’ve been filtering through all morning,” said Capt. Mike Johnson of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. “We’ve been letting them have 100 bags at a time.”

“We’d sure like to be able to deal with the fire problems before dealing with the flood problems,” Johnson said. “Looks like there will be an overlap this year.”

The Topanga station also is handing out winter rye grass seed and encouraging residents to sow the fast-growing grass quickly.

(The grass is the target of complaints by conservationists that it not only crowds out the natural flora of the canyon, but does little to prevent erosion. State forestry officials have said that the grass sometimes works to protect fire-bared soil, and sometimes does not.)

In the San Gabriel Valley, where an Oct. 27 blaze started accidentally by a transient razed 121 homes throughout the Altadena and Kinneloa Canyon neighborhoods, roughly 30,000 sandbags have been distributed since Monday, said County Fire Department Capt. Mike Jasperson.

An order of 50,000 additional bags should arrive Thursday, he said.

Forecasters said the incoming storm, moving rapidly southward from the Pacific Northwest, has the potential to bring 1 to 1 1/2 inches of rain to the mountains and up to half an inch in coastal and valley areas. The new storm may produce snow down to the 4,000-foot level of Southern California mountains, the National Weather Service said.

Hillside residents in Laguna Beach said they were awakened before dawn by the sound of thunder, rain and a river of debris passing by their homes.

Some looked out windows to see patio furniture, tree stumps and even once-parked cars streaming past them on hilly streets and slopes, washed away in a torrent of water and mud.

Resident David Battersby said he watched as a dozen cars floated down Canyon Acres Drive, stacking against one another.

“They were just down there like Tinker Toys, banging up against each other,” he said.

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Canyon Acres was one of several Laguna Beach neighborhoods that suffered a double dose of misfortune--first the wildfire of two weeks ago, then Thursday’s slides.

“I thought I was going to have a quiet morning,” Laguna Beach Mayor Lida Lenney said as she looked out her office window at the mud-caked downtown streets. “My God, what a mess.”

The wet pavement created traffic problems. On the Ventura Freeway near Parkway Calabasas, two cars heading east just before 1 a.m. piled into a stalled auto in the left lane, seriously injuring one man. As a CHP officer tended him, another car crashed into the CHP vehicle. Neither the officer nor that car’s driver was injured, authorities said.

A truck driver heading east on the Ventura Freeway veered onto the San Rafael off-ramp at 6:35 a.m. to avoid an overturned car and flipped, the truck’s load smashing the car. Both drivers were treated for minor injuries at a nearby hospital.

At the San Diego Wild Animal Park in northern San Diego County, workers cleared culverts and began building hay-bale dams to prevent mudslides from endangering the animals.

A blaze known as the Guejito fire, which burned perilously close to the park, broke out Oct. 26 and raged out of control for four days, claiming 20,732 acres.

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Times staff writers Ron Russell and Mike Carlson contributed to this report