Storm Causes Accidents, Small Slides : Weather: More than an inch falls on the Valley. One man dies in a collision, and quake- wracked CSUN is turned into a muddy bog.

A powerful Pacific storm dumped more than an inch of rain on the San Fernando Valley on Thursday, triggering dozens of traffic accidents and minor landslides and transforming the quake-crippled Cal State Northridge campus into a muddy bog.

A 23-year-old Woodland Hills man died as a result of the rains when he lost control of his speeding car and collided head-on with an oncoming vehicle on Topanga Canyon Boulevard about 9 a.m., said Los Angeles Police Officer Theresa Gordon.

Police had no estimate of the number of rain-related traffic accidents, except that there were many of them.

“Today is no different than any other day when it rains,” said Sgt. Paul Modrell of the LAPD’s Valley traffic division. “On rainy days, it seems we can’t put enough officers on the streets for all the fender-benders.”

In another accident on Malibu Canyon Road, 21-year-old Michelle Faircloth of Calabasas narrowly escaped serious injury when a boulder the size of a kitchen stove fell onto the roof of her compact car about 7:40 a.m.

Her boyfriend, Paul Barton, who was driving about 100 feet in front of her because the road conditions were so poor, pulled her from the wreckage.

“I was looking in my rear-view mirror and I saw her lights shut off and I knew something was terribly wrong,” Barton said. “I sprinted to her car, and when I got there I thought she was dead.”

She was “very lucky . . . to be alive,” California Highway Patrol Officer Dave King said.

Faircloth, a senior at Pepperdine University, was treated at Westlake Medical Center for a broken collarbone and released but sought another medical opinion and underwent surgery at West Valley Hospital and Health Center later in the day.

On the Antelope Valley Freeway near San Fernando Road, a semi-trailer truck slid out of control and its trailer overturned about 10:30 a.m., blocking southbound traffic for nearly 90 minutes, CHP Officer Bill Granados said.

Rain-drenched earth churned from reconstruction efforts at CSUN, which was devastated one month earlier by the magnitude-6.8 Northridge earthquake, reduced the 353-acre campus to a muddy mess.

Yet most students and teachers seemed to take another day of difficulty in stride.

“It was leaking this morning, but the students did all right,” said Carlos Guerrero, a part-time Chicano studies instructor who taught a morning class in one of the hundreds of portable modular classrooms that have been set up throughout the campus to temporarily replace damaged buildings.

Guerrero said he saw a woman slip and fall in the mud while walking across the campus but added, “She got up laughing.”

But for some, the rain was the final straw.

“How am I supposed to get to class?” asked senior Delores Evans, as she looked out onto the muck between her and the modular unit that serves as her engineering classroom.

“I’m not walking in that . . . not with my new rain boots on anyway. It’s time for me to go home,” she said.

The downpour delayed by one day the assembly of several hundred more portable classrooms, but university officials expect the work to be completed by Monday.

Workers were able to protect rare books and other materials at the Oviatt Library by covering the roof with tarps, said Elliot Mininberg, CSUN’s vice president for administration.

More than an inch of wind-driven rain hammered the fragile slopes above Malibu early Thursday morning, but most of the runoff was manageable. By late morning, the rain had begun to slacken, the sun was beginning to peek through and residents who had fled their homes were returning.

In Malibu, where the Pacific Coast Highway was blocked and 25 homes below the charred hillsides were invaded by mud last week, residents were better prepared on Thursday, their houses protected with sturdy makeshift barriers that diverted the flow into runoff channels.

Caltrans crews used skip-loaders to scoop water and mud from a pond that grew but never overflowed above Pacific Coast Highway at the base of Big Rock Drive.

Some of the homeowners stood guard against the torrent that never came.

Barry McManus, wearing a plastic trash bag for a raincoat, waited in front of his four-unit apartment building that was damaged by mud Feb 7.

“We’ll stop it this time,” he said. “We’re doing more sandbagging and we’re going to keep the flow moving with a fire hose.”

A couple of houses away, Randy Brant, 42, explained that he left his garage doors open this time so that any mud seeping in one end could flow out the other.

“If I’d done that last time, everything would have been OK,” said Brant, who lost a car, a washing machine and golf clubs during last week’s storm.

Last week, Brant drove a golf ball down PCH with a salvaged club while waiting for Caltrans to reopen the road.

“The best thing then was that my friends back East saw me tee off on TV and hit a car with a golf ball,” he said.

Other residents decided to play it safe on Thursday, leaving their homes as soon as the storm struck.

“After the fire, the earthquake, then this, I finally considered leaving for a while,” said Linda Derussy, as she loaded her dog, Sam, into a friend’s Land Rover. She said she planned to return as soon as the skies cleared.

Kent Knudsen, armed with a broom, watched and waited in front of the house on Pacific Coast Highway that he had barricaded with a wall of sandbags 3 feet high.

“We got hit pretty hard last time,” he said before ducking out of sight to avoid a television cameraman.

“Everyone thinks I’m a victim--I hate it,” said Knudsen, who was shown being carried to safety on a skip-loader during last week’s floods. “I have relatives in Colorado sending me photos of myself being saved.”’

As they did last week, the fire-ravaged hillsides of Laguna Beach escaped severe mudslides, despite .87 of an inch of rain that briefly flooded Laguna Canyon Road and caused a short flash flood on Canyon Acres Drive at midday.

In Costa Mesa, a sudden burst of wind about 10:30 a.m. peeled the roof off a four-bedroom bluff-top home. The Newport Beach Fire Department arrived five minutes later and nailed plastic over the home to protect the interior from the rain.

The main body of the storm moved east into Arizona and southern Nevada by nightfall Thursday, and forecasters expected today’s weather to be partly cloudy with a chance of showers through tonight. The National Weather Service said skies should remain partly cloudy on Saturday with a renewed chance of showers late Sunday and early Monday.

By 5 p.m. Thursday, .77 of an inch of rain had fallen at the Los Angeles Civic Center, raising the season’s total there to 4.14 inches, less than half the normal count of 9.71 inches for the date. The rainfall season is measured from July 1 to June 30.

Other rainfall figures as of 5 p.m. Thursday included 1.87 inches at the Santa Monica Pier, 1.81 in Torrance, 1.49 in Santa Ana, 1.21 in Woodland Hills, .86 in Monrovia and .75 in Pasadena.

Times staff writers John Chandler and Eric Malnic and correspondent Kathleen Kelleher contributed to this story.

Rainy Days San Fernando Valley rainfall totals, in inches, from July 1 to Feb. 16.

1991- 1992- 1993- 1992 1993 1994 Canoga Park/ 24.1 24.6 4.5* Woodland Hills Van Nuys 21.1 24.7 3.9* Burbank 21.0 24.2 3.9*

*Estimated Source: WeatherData Inc.