Summer Bids a Reluctant Adieu : Holiday: Weather is perfect for beach and barbecues. Riverside Freeway jammed for hours by wreck.

Under brilliant sunshine that refused to call it a summer, Orange County residents celebrated their Labor Day respite on Monday the best way they know how: with beach chairs and barbecues.

Yet while it was casual and leisurely in back yards and at the ocean, there was a harsh dose of holiday mayhem on streets and freeways.

Police reported that a car crash in Orange early Monday killed a Huntington Beach woman and injured three other people, including a 3-year-old girl. And in the afternoon, traffic bound to and from Orange County was backed up for hours on the Riverside Freeway after a big rig overturned.

Other freeways, including the northbound Interstate 5 near the beach cities, were knotted in the usual holiday-weekend snarls.

At beaches around the county, lifeguards estimated midday crowds as smaller than average for a Labor Day, the symbolic end of summer.

“It’s been pretty quiet for a holiday weekend,” said Lt. Eric Bauer, a lifeguard supervisor at Newport Beach. He estimated the beach crowd at 105,000--notably fewer than the 125,000 who flock there on the busiest days. “It’s not as busy as some Labor Days I can remember,” Bauer said.

Yet the weather was perfect for a day at the beach, with cloudless skies and temperatures along the coast reaching the mid-70s, while the high in the county was 91 degrees in San Juan Capistrano. “If people are staying away, it’s not because of the weather,” said Lt. Steve Seim, a lifeguard at Huntington Beach.

Some people found their way to the beach for the first--and last--time of the season. Rainbow-colored umbrellas sprouted like giant flowers, the surest sign of a holiday weekend at the beach, Seim said.

“It’s a sight you always see on these holiday weekends--the days the non-tanned people are out here,” he said.

Some of those people could be found at Aliso Beach in Laguna Beach, where smoke from barbecues wafted over the sand. Margie Wright of Mission Viejo huddled under an umbrella, swaddled in a towel, while her friend Dani Kleine sat nearby in the sun, working on a tan in time for her 10-year high school reunion next weekend. It was the first time either had been to the beach this summer.

“We dragged her out here because we needed sun,” said Kleine, who lives in Hacienda Heights. She looked down at her freshly rosy midriff. “I’ll probably be nice and peeling by Saturday.”

Children were busy wringing the last bit of fun out of summer before heading back to school.

Rachael Korobkin, 9, of San Clemente and her friend Emily Houdeshell, 9, of Laguna Hills nibbled corn dogs at a San Clemente carnival and tallied the summer’s high points. Rachael’s family had gone three times to a vacation home in Northern California. Emily was casual about her recent trip to a dude ranch in Colorado. “You ride a horse a lot,” Emily said between bites. “It’s basically the only thing you do.”

Some weary parents seemed only too happy to see summer end.

As his daughter and nephew fired noisy carnival machine guns at paper targets, Gary Moreau predicted the return of quiet to his house. “My wife’s happy because the kids are going back to school and they’ll be out of her hair,” said Moreau, a Manhattan Beach contractor. “A lot of fighting. A lot of arguing.”

Sandie Rowe of San Clemente watched her 4-year-old daughter, Hillary, zoom past on a spaceship ride. “Hey, space alien!” she shouted. Rowe was in no hurry to declare an end to summer.

“It was pretty hot,” she said, “but I’m sorry to see it go.”

But not all was fun and merriment.

Police said Cathryn McFadden, 43, was killed about 7:20 a.m. when her vehicle, traveling north on Jamboree Road, collided with one traveling east on Chapman Avenue.

The driver of the second vehicle, Oscar Rene Castillo, 31, of Orange, was taken into custody on outstanding criminal warrants unrelated to the crash, Orange police accident investigator Roy Griffith said.

The crash remains under investigation, Griffith said.

Castillo, who suffered minor injuries, was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana along with two passengers in his car.

The 3-year-old girl, who suffered head cuts and a broken wrist, was treated and released, and Andrea Tobar, 25, of Orange remained in the hospital with chest and abdominal injuries.

Griffith did not identify the child and declined to say whether the injured were wearing seat belts.

On the Riverside Freeway, an eastbound truck crossed over the center dividing wall and overturned shortly before 3 p.m. near Green River Road, leading to a multiple-injury accident involving several vehicles, said California Highway Patrol Officer Ruth O’Brien.

The westbound lanes were closed for several hours while crews cleaned spilled diesel fuel and oil from the freeway, and traffic had to be rerouted, O’Brien said. Two eastbound lanes were shut down as well. All lanes except the car-pool lanes were open by about 8:45 p.m.

Times staff writers Rene Lynch and Julie Marquis contributed to this report.