Deluge Brings Flooding, Traffic Havoc : Weather: Cars and homes are swamped. One person is killed.

After presenting a vivid, blue-sky New Year’s holiday to the world via television, Southern California got its weather comeuppance Wednesday as the second day of an Alaskan storm flooded dozens of homes, knocked out power in several communities, closed businesses and schools and wreaked havoc with traffic.

Despite the suddenness of the deluge--which brought as much as five inches of rain in some areas--it was linked to only one traffic fatality. And bare hillsides from Malibu to Altadena to Laguna Beach that were denuded in the 1993 firestorms showed surprising resistance to major mudslides.

Wind and waves proved too much for the Port Hueneme Fishing Pier, washing away 200 feet at the pier’s end. The driving rain also inundated fields of lettuce on the Oxnard plain, flooded homes near Point Mugu and soaked a Simi Valley soccer store.

Residents across Ventura County rushed for sandbags to build berms against the water rising with the downpour, which dropped 2 1/2 inches on Simi Valley and nearly 4 inches on Oxnard.

The flooding hit hardest in the South Bay, where about 100 families in just one Carson neighborhood were asked to evacuate homes flooded with up to four feet of water and where a Hawthorne convalescent hospital had to be evacuated.

Some businesses and homes also were vacated in Laguna Beach, and the Orange County Board of Supervisors--fearing the worst--declared a countywide state of emergency. In Long Beach, the partial collapses of at least five buildings also led local officials to declare a state of emergency.

So swift was the downpour in parts of south Los Angeles County that many drivers had to wade to safety from suddenly swamped cars. And a San Pedro woman was sucked under a parked car after she rescued her daughter from a torrent that raced down a steep hillside street.

In Los Angeles, about 22,000 Department of Water and Power customers were left without electricity as the storm knocked out power lines.

Snow and rain forced road closures from Interstate 5 at the Grapevine to the Angeles Crest Highway in the mountains to Laguna Canyon Road and Santa Monica’s California Street incline along the coast. Flooded sections of the Harbor, Long Beach, Artesia, San Diego and Golden State freeways were also shut down Wednesday night.

Cal State Northridge and USC both allowed employees and students to leave in the early afternoon so that they might have a safer and faster commute home. Some snow-sprinkled Antelope Valley schools also closed for the afternoon, as did numerous businesses, including Hughes Aircraft’s corporate headquarters in the flood-plagued Los Angeles International Airport area.

The rain brought some of the worst flooding in Southern California since February, 1992, when a swollen Los Angeles River trapped more than 40 motorists on roads that traverse the Sepulveda Dam flood basin. Emergency crews were braced in hillside communities as forecasters predicted another night of rain before a break this morning. WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said the rain should be reduced to showers by this morning, with some clearing skies by afternoon.

One of the most harrowing incidents of the day occurred in San Pedro, where a 25-year-old mother was sucked under a car after pulling her 6-year-old daughter out of a fast-moving current. Edith Duran, was trapped under the car on steep West 18th Street and lost consciousness, as her daughter, Marcy Guerrero, screamed for help, authorities said.

“I heard a woman screaming ‘Oh, my God’ ” said Doris Cline, 50, who raced from her home in bare feet to help. Three men were frantically trying to pull the woman free, but the force of the water was so strong that they could not.

“Water was rushing down the street full force, so hard it lifted the car and turned it around,” Cline said. “Nobody said anything. I didn’t ask any questions. I had no idea who the other guys were. Everyone was just panicked, trying to get this person out.”

Finally, another good Samaritan arrived and pushed the car far enough onto the curb that the others freed the woman, whose face had turned blue, Cline said.

“Someone said her name was Edith, and I just kept telling her, ‘Don’t worry, Edith, you’re gonna be OK,” Cline said.

Mother and daughter were taken to San Pedro Peninsula Hospital, where the girl was listed in stable condition, and her mother was in critical condition in intensive care.

The one fatality linked to the downpour was in Chatsworth, where a woman was struck by two cars as she crossed DeSoto Avenue at Lemarsh Street about 5:30 p.m. Details of the accident were not available, although one of the cars did not stop after the crash, police said.

Power outages were scattered in San Pedro, Lincoln Heights, South-Central Los Angeles, Hollywood, the Hollywood Hills, West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.

Jan Merlo, a spokeswoman with the DWP, said the department would work through the night to restore power. By dusk, however, some outages continued citywide.

The storm also disrupted air traffic across the state, forcing airlines to cancel or delay flights and leaving passengers stranded. Southwest Airlines canceled 25 departures out of Los Angeles International Airport, and American Airlines diverted two inbound jets from Chicago and Miami to Las Vegas to refuel and wait out the storm. United Airlines also diverted flights to Ontario and Las Vegas.

On the ground, the low-lying bedroom communities of the South Bay sustained some of the worst damage. Many of the neighborhoods there were built on what was once marshland--and the weather seemed determined to return much of the area to its natural state.

County firefighters asked residents in a three-square-block area of one Carson neighborhood to leave when their homes were flooded in up to four feet of water--although it was unclear how many of the 100 families heeded the advice, since a shelter at Carson High School had not received any evacuees by mid-evening.

On 220th Street and Foley Avenue in Carson, cars were window-deep in water from an overflowing storm drain. Lucia Anchetch, 51, said she waded knee-deep in rainwater from her driveway to her doorway. Nearby, Mariza Parra, 19, said she returned home from work to find the tide headed toward her living room. “All the inside is wet,” Parra mourned. “The floor was just soaked.”

In Hawthorne, 95 patients at the Goldenwest Convalescent Hospital on Inglewood Avenue also were evacuated, beginning about 1 p.m. after rain poured in through a roof that was being replaced.

The elderly residents were taken to nursing homes from Inglewood to Los Angles, said hospital administrator Roberta Ross. More than an inch of water stood in the hospital’s foyer and buckets and trash baskets were put out to catch drips in the hallways.

East of Torrance, in the Harbor City area, an open storm drain overflowed, flooding about a dozen homes and submerging about 45 vehicles in and around the intersection of Vermont Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard.

“The water started rising in the flood channel at about 12:30 p.m.,” said Robert McFall, manager of an auto repair yard on Vermont. “It kept rising until it spilled over in the streets, and it just kept on coming . . . It was unbelievable.”

Cars that tried to make their way through the rising water often met with poor results.

“There were cars stuck everywhere,” said Celia Contes, manager of a service station at Sepulveda and Vermont. “People were wading and swimming to higher ground. Some of them were pulling their kids out of the cars and putting them on the roofs until someone could carry them to safety.”

Even a KABC-TV news helicopter trying to survey the damage was not immune--being forced to make an emergency landing in a supermarket parking lot because of a sudden downdraft.

In the southeast area, the flooding was particularly bad in Hawaiian Gardens and the eastern part of Lakewood, said Sgt. Tim Dowling of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Rising floodwaters forced Hawaiian Gardens City Hall to close early, entire neighborhoods in the city to be evacuated and residents of street-level units at a senior citizens’ apartment complex on 226th Street had to flee to upper floors. City officials were sending displaced residents to a gymnasium being used as an emergency evacuation center.

So daunting and impassable were floodwaters in many areas that drivers abandoned their cars.

Jo Studebaker, 50, and Diane Cranley, 33, spent about 2 1/2 hours each on the San Diego Freeway, in a futile attempt to commute between the Los Angeles area and Orange County. The two, who were driving separately, gave up after they had inched only as far as Carson, where they both booked hotel rooms for the night.

Blizzard conditions in some areas forced closure of Interstate 5, the state’s major north-south roadway, from Lake Hughes Road to Lavalle Road in the Grapevine area. Traffic was allowed through only sporadically, with California Highway Patrol escorts.

The danger and consternation in the rainy lowlands was matched by glee at ski resorts, where operators said heavy snowfall marks the continuation of good conditions for skiers.

Jack Turner, a vice president with the Bear Mountain resort in Big Bear Lake, was as pleased with the more than a foot of snow as he was with predictions of clearing for the weekend.

“This is a ski area guy’s dream come true. It’s snowing like a banshee,” said Turner, a vice president with the Bear Mountain ski resort in Big Bear Lake.

The National Weather Service said that by 4 p.m., 2.03 inches of rain had fallen at the Los Angeles Civic Center. That raised the total from the two-day storm to 2.48 inches and the total for the season--which runs from July 1 to June 30--to 4.63 inches. The normal season’s total for the date is 5.24 inches. Other daily rainfall totals as of 4 p.m. Wednesday included 4.65 inches at the Santa Monica Pier, 3.96 inches in Long Beach, 3.14 in Newhall, 2.75 in Woodland Hills, 2.72 in Ventura, 2.18 in Santa Ana, 2.03 in Monrovia, 2.00 in Montebello, 1.90 in Pasadena and 1.15 in Anaheim.

Times staff writers Shawn Hubler, Stephanie Simon, Jesus Sanchez, Lisa Richardson, Ted Johnson and Eric Slater, and correspondents Kathy Kelleher, James Benning, Jon Garcia, Mary Guthrie, Steve Eames, Jeff Kass, John Canalis and Marisa Osorio Colon contributed to this story.

* VENTURA COUNTY: Winter storm drenches the county with 3 inches of rain. B1