Mopping Up : Aftermath: As storm waters recede, victims begin cleaning mud from homes and businesses. Governor is asked to declare an emergency in L.A. County.

Tackling a soggy job with resignation, grit and a hint of awe, Los Angeles County residents Thursday mopped up after a fearsome Pacific storm that flooded scores of homes and streets with reckless force.

Hundreds of homeowners swept out swamped basements. Shop owners picked through muddy merchandise. And motorists puzzled over stalled engines, enlisting neighbors and mechanics to rescue half-drowned cars.

“Boy, it’s wet,” 18-year-old Ronald Robes said dejectedly as he sloshed through ankle-deep water in his mother’s Long Beach bridal shop.

The two-day downpour was blamed for two deaths--Maria Isabel Ramirez of Panorama City, killed in a Chatsworth traffic accident, and Robert Martinez of Long Beach, overcome by carbon monoxide fumes after water blocked his trapped vehicle’s tailpipe.

County Supervisor Gloria Molina, acting in her capacity as chairwoman of the board, late Thursday signed a declaration proclaiming a local emergency and asking Gov. Pete Wilson to proclaim a local state of emergency in Los Angeles County. That act would make all county residents eligible for state emergency aid.

Although blue skies returned Thursday, the storm’s fierce imprint slapped a dozen cities across Southern California with lasting damage.

In Long Beach, vast puddles gulped up portions of Del Amo Boulevard just east of the Long Beach Freeway. The murky water presented an odd contrast with the sunny skies, but commuters were not in the mood to ponder the swift shift in weather.

A few motorists, especially those in rugged four-wheel-drive vehicles, boldly crashed through the lake. Many more turned back in fear after gaping at a string of at least 20 stalled, waterlogged cars that had not made it through the intersection.

In pre-dawn darkness, driver Dory Baterisna unwittingly splashed into the Del Amo lake on her morning commute and froze in terror as cold, clammy water surged into her car.

“It was 6 a.m. and dark, so I didn’t see the water (at the intersection),” Baterisna said.

She saw it soon enough--swirling around her waist. Trying not to panic, Baterisna forced her car door open and fled to higher ground. “There was no way I was going to stay in that car,” she said.

Eventually, a tow truck tugged her mud-flecked car to a dry spot on Del Amo and Baterisna sat there for hours, awaiting further help.

Meanwhile, dozens of residents who had evacuated their homes in Carson, Hawaiian Gardens and Hawthorne returned to check out the damage. Wet clothes, towels and rugs hung outside on railings in the sun as homeowners went about the task of drying out and cleaning up. Most wore mud-caked boots and mud-spattered sweat pants.

In Carson, Jorge Diaz emerged from his house carrying a stuffed cat toy by the tail, now bedraggled and dripping water. “This yours?” he asked his 19-year-old daughter, Griselda. She and her sisters chuckled, the waterlogged stuffed animal being the least of their losses.

Inside the house, mud covered every floor, and had even inexplicably oozed into the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. The videos were destroyed, the camcorder was soaked, the wall-to-wall carpeting was now wall-to-wall dirty water. A still-decorated Christmas tree stood in the living room, still festive amid the debris. A couple of ornaments lay under the tree on the mud-soaked floor.

“I don’t think I have natural disaster insurance because no one expected this,” said Diaz, a truck driver who has lived in his house for 21 years. Nonetheless, he planned to call his insurance agent soon. “Maybe he has more ideas than I do,” he said hopefully.

In the sloshy crusade to reclaim their homes, residents tested all sorts of tools to whisk water from basements and bedrooms. With plastic buckets, straw brooms and garden tools, they sought to wipe away reminders of the deluge.

But the damage would not quickly evaporate.

“All my papers are wet and my bed is wet,” said Candelaria Javier, 83, who lives in the hard-hit Hawaiian Terrace Senior Apartments in Hawaiian Gardens.

Javier had opted to stick it out through the storm Wednesday night, camping in a friend’s apartment and keeping an eye on her complex. But several of her neighbors, spooked by the water pouring into first-floor apartments, evacuated to a makeshift Red Cross shelter.

“The city was really great, sending a bus to pick us up and carrying us over there,” said Mary Gruendler, 80, who fled the storm. “It was hard to sleep though, because you were in unfamiliar surroundings and worried and all.”

When she returned to her apartment Thursday morning, Gruendler sought to buoy her friends’ spirits throughout the long cleanup. In other communities, too, flood victims approached their tasks with a measure of cheer.

When Carson residents Walter and Inez Lesh discovered that four giant goldfish had vanished from their rock-lined pond, their daughter, Sissy Baldwin, suggested that the swim-aways may have fled to “that big pond in the hereafter.”

Lesh leaned over and stroked his remaining three goldfish as they scurried around their pond, now returned to its normal water level.

“You better not leave home!” he boomed to them.

In Long Beach, however, Eden Robes could not joke about the disaster that hit her tiny custom bridal shop on Willow Street. The storm drenched silk and satin gowns on display, and destroyed fabric she had stored in her nearby garage.

And just as Robes struggled to clean off a delicate brocade bodice, dabbing gently at the grime, a stiff gust of wind hit and toppled the mannequin wearing the soiled gown. Doll and dress both tumbled into the mud.

Robes moaned.

“When the water came, I couldn’t do anything,” she said. She tried for a moment to tally her losses, then gave up. “At this moment, I cannot figure it out.”

While flood victims labored to clean up the storm’s wreckage, surfers and skiers rushed to take advantage of the quirky weather.

About two feet of snow fell in the Mt. Pinos Recreation Area, and plenty of people played hooky from work and school to hit the slopes.

“Business is great,” said Lisa Creed, assistant manager of Frazier Ski and Pack. “Since Christmas Eve, actually, it’s been one of the busiest periods we’ve had in five years.”

And locals predicted still more action near Mt. Pinos today.

“We’ll have a big influx of traffic over the weekend coming up to play in the snow,” said Sgt. Jack Skaggs of the Ft. Tejon CHP office. “If anybody wants to come up, Friday is the time to do it.”

Beach communities offered tempting places for play as well. The storm whipped up 10-foot waves that were hard for surfers to resist, despite official warnings of sewage, pesticides and motor oil flooding the Pacific Ocean.

Dr. Shirley Fannin, director of disease control for the Los Angeles County Health Services Department, said some die-hard surfers and swimmers were bound to hit the beaches in the next few days. She warned them to stay well away from storm drains, where contaminated runoff flows into the ocean.

Near San Pedro, Cabrillo Beach was closed after 1 million gallons of raw sewage swept into Los Angeles Harbor. The sewage spill occurred when debris blocked lines flowing into the Terminal Island Treatment Plant.

Another sewage spill near Grand Avenue forced closure of about five miles of shoreline stretching from Sand Piper Street near Los Angeles International Airport to Manhattan Beach. Officials said the beach would probably be closed for a few days.

Elsewhere in Southern California, more than 20 Orange County flood control channels overflowed during the downpour. Flooding was concentrated in the western county, from Huntington Beach to La Palma. A torrent of rain also tore out a 100-foot stretch of beach and boardwalk in Laguna Beach for a damage tab of about $300,000.

In Ventura County, surf up to 14 feet high battered municipal piers in Port Hueneme and Ventura on Thursday. During the height of the storm Wednesday, waves ripped a 200-foot section from Port Hueneme’s pier and knocked loose pilings in Ventura. Damage was estimated at $250,000.

Crashing waves also began washing away an 8,000-square-foot training center and an aging fishing pier at the Point Mugu Naval Base.

Naval and county fire workers scrambled Thursday morning to salvage thousands of dollars worth of computers, office equipment and furniture from the center before it washed out to sea.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Lisa Respers, Lisa Richardson, Efrain Hernandez Jr., Christina Lima, James Rainey and Phil Sneiderman and Times correspondents Jeff Kass, Brett Mahoney, Mark Sabbatini and Kay Saillant.