Couple Killed in Collision During Rain : Weather: Their 2 children, another girl are critically hurt. Storm causes flooding in Dana Point, closure of Laguna Canyon Road, PCH in Huntington Beach. Mudslides hit Malibu.

An intense winter downpour, the third major storm to hit the region in two weeks, on Sunday triggered a traffic accident in Anaheim that killed a San Luis Obispo County couple and critically injured three others--including the couple’s two teen-age children.

The rain also caused minor flooding in some areas of Dana Point, forced the brief closure of a section of Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach and, to the north, left Malibu residents once again digging out of mud and debris that surged down rain-soaked hillsides.

In Orange County, the storm’s wrath turned deadly about 7:10 a.m. as Joseph Franklin Reagan, 50, and his wife, Linda Lee, 42, of Los Osos traveled east in their van near Gypsum Canyon Road on the Riverside Freeway in Anaheim.

A California Highway Patrol spokeswoman said the van was traveling about 65 m.p.h. in heavy rain when Joseph Reagan lost control of the vehicle, which slid across three lanes before broadsiding a semitrailer truck.

The couple, who were wearing seat belts, were pronounced dead at the scene. Their son, Joseph Charles, 18, and daughter, Wendi Lee, 15, suffered multiple injuries and were rushed to UCI Medical Center in Orange.

A third passenger in the Reagan van, identified as Sarah Burns, 15, was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. All three were listed in critical condition.

The CHP spokeswoman said the truck’s driver, Richard August Thayer, 34, was not injured. Thayer had just delivered a load of milk in Santa Ana and was heading back to his home in Ontario when the collision occurred, according to the CHP.

Apart from the tragedy in Anaheim, Sunday’s heavy rains prompted renewed fears of mudslides in Laguna Beach after mud cascaded over the hillsides onto Laguna Canyon Road. Officials were forced to close off the roadway for about an hour from the San Diego Freeway to Coast Highway.

“We had mud and water coming across the road to such a degree that it was making it unsafe for vehicles to pass,” said Officer Joh Fehlman.

Police said no homes in the area were in danger, but as a precaution, Red Cross officials opened a temporary evacuation center at Laguna Beach High School, which remained virtually empty throughout the day. Accustomed to mudslide scares, most Laguna Beach residents chose to remain in their homes.

The minor flooding in Dana Point consisted of overflowing of some flood control channels, officials said.

The heavy rains kept police and fire officials busy with minor traffic accidents and calls for service throughout the day. In Fullerton, firefighters were called out to rescue a German shepherd dog that was swept down a flood control channel by angry floodwaters.

With the help of fire and police units, an animal control officer managed to snare the frightened dog near Dale Street.

The dog’s “nails were all bleeding because she was dragged along the cement walls” by the rushing water, said Ray Easley, a Fullerton Fire Department battalion chief. “She was so glad to be out of there.”

Bruce Thoren, a meteorologist with WeatherData, said Santa Ana received the most rainfall in Orange County, 1.53 inches. Newport Beach received .86 of an inch, Anaheim recorded .84 and .7 fell in El Toro. Figures for South County weren’t available.

Thoren said there was a 30% chance of isolated showers this morning, but no other rainfall is predicted for the first half of the week.

Elsewhere, the powerful cloudbursts Sunday forced a brief closing of Interstate 5 at the Grapevine.

The showers dropped up to three inches of rain along some parts of the coast and up to a foot of snow in the mountains.

The two deaths in Orange County weren’t the only traffic fatalities: An unidentified man was killed Sunday morning when his car skidded out of control on the westbound Artesia Freeway near the Lakewood Boulevard intersection in Bellflower. The man, who was not wearing a seat belt, died when he was thrown from his car.

The rain was also blamed for two power outages Sunday that left more than 1,600 Southern California Edison customers in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica without electricity for two hours, an Edison spokesman said.

In Malibu, rescue workers raced Sunday to evacuate residents whose homes were threatened by the movement of water, mud and rocks toward the sea. Garages and front doors of more than 50 homes along Pacific Coast Highway were inundated.

Los Angeles County lifeguards and sheriff’s deputies used ropes to rescue Christa Roberts and her two sons, ages 9 and 10, from their home on Carbon Canyon Road, where a river of water about 4 feet deep and 15 feet wide swept down the canyon, blocking their escape.

Nasier Filippin, a Big Rock resident who was on his way to the ski slopes, refused to leave his Mercedes-Benz when it became mired in the mud near the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Big Rock Drive. Filippin sat in the vehicle for nearly an hour and a half as the fast-moving water crept halfway up the silver car.

Filippin was finally plucked to safety by a lifeguard who was lowered to the vehicle by the scoop of a CalTrans caterpillar.

Standing under an umbrella on a stack of sandbags across from his car, Filippin said: “I’m very upset. Honest to God, I don’t want to talk about it.”

On Sunday, Caltrans skip loaders worked at scooping up the muck, filling dump trucks that unloaded the ooze over the side of the highway and down to the ocean at Las Flores Canyon Road and Big Rock Drive. Officials closed the highway between Topanga Canyon Road and Cross Creek Road.

At Las Flores Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway, an enormous mudflow filled the parking lot and part of the interior of the Charley Brown’s Sea Lion Restaurant, and flowed into the ground floor of a nearby five-unit, two-story apartment complex.

“We thought we had it made because we didn’t get it in the other disasters, but it just came through our bedroom, broke the wall open,” said a woman who lived in a ground-floor apartment with her husband and asked not to be named. “We couldn’t get the door open, but we finally got out. Everything is gone.”

A number of residents whose homes were hit in the Feb. 7 storm, which damaged at least 25 homes, found their homes inundated again by Sunday’s rain.

Times staff writers John L. Mitchell and Tammerlin Drummond contributed to this story.