Region’s Coping Skills Pass Test : Storms: As rain brings down denuded hillsides and floods homes and streets, emergency crews and ordinary people rise to nature’s latest challenge.

Floods in 1992. Fire in 1993. Quake in 1994.

Right on schedule, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Northridge quake, 1995 began with a miserable new reminder of nature’s power for the San Fernando Valley.

An unrelenting rain chewed at fire-denuded hillsides, swirled mockingly around piles of earthquake debris and flooded virtually every Valley intersection with a nasty slush of water and grit.

“Water’s curb-to-curb on most intersections,” Sgt. Joseph Brazas of the LAPD’s Van Nuys Division reported Tuesday afternoon.

Mudslides threatened a dozen homes in Glendale. Residents were stranded in communities from Sand Canyon in the north to Malibou Lake in the west as rivers of mud and rock washed out their access roads. Some Topanga residents were rescued from their isolated Santa Monica Mountains homes by helicopter.

Everywhere, the area’s freshly-honed disaster skills appeared to pay off. Emergency crews moved efficiently throughout the day to seal off hazards, rescue those in trouble and stand out of the way of those who could take care of themselves.

And ordinary people took up the challenge.

When lifelong Topanga residents Janet Schlihf and Jimmy Dehr saw a fallen oak tree sticking out into narrow, winding Old Topanga Canyon Road, they fetched a power saw and began cutting.

“We can get the tree out of the way and keep the firewood,” Schlihf said as she tossed cut logs into the back of a pickup truck.

The day’s most urgent mission, a half-hour rescue watch over the Los Angeles River, ended without result when eight Los Angeles City Fire Department trucks and two helicopters were unable to find any sign of a body that a telephone caller reported seeing in the Los Angeles River near Coldwater Canyon Boulevard.

All four of the city’s swift-water rescue teams were put on duty, but by mid-afternoon had taken part in no rescues. The six-person teams spent much of the day patrolling channels to make sure their pre-planned rescue spots had not been made unsafe by the boiling brown water.

There was one harrowing rescue after a Canyon Country man tried to drive his pickup truck across a flooded bridge in Placerita Canyon. Five-foot-deep water, racing at 30 m.p.h. swept a truck driven by Vid Maric, 68, against a foot-wide steel pipe that power company workers were trying to lift out of the rising water.

The pipe held the truck in place until a firefighter was lowered from a crane at about 3:45 p.m. and pulled the uninjured Maric out the back window of the truck, and lifted him to safety.

Fortunately, the desperate rescues of motorists trapped in Sepulveda Basin--scenes that became the symbol of the 1992 storm--did not have to be repeated Tuesday. Well before floodwaters reached the danger level, the Los Angeles Police Department closed Burbank Boulevard and Woodley Avenue, the two streets that pass through the basin.

By afternoon, muddy water completely covered grass, bushes and even trees and traffic signals in the flood plain behind Sepulveda Dam.

Tuesday’s storm exceeded the average rain total for the entire month of January. From 4 p.m. Monday to 4 p.m. Tuesday, the storm dumped 5.3 inches on the Sepulveda Dam area and from 4 to 6 inches in parts of Woodland Hills. Average January rainfall, National Weather Service Meteorologist Clay Morgan said, is about 3.2 inches.

A mudslide shoved a tree onto Coldwater Canyon Boulevard near Mulholland Drive about 6:30 p.m., blocking both southbound lanes and backing up traffic for half a mile, said LAPD Sgt. Jim Gavin.

In Glendale the City Council declared a local state of emergency. About a dozen houses were damaged or endangered as mud sluiced onto streets in two hillside areas.

Firefighters evacuated residents in the 1900 blocks of Maginn and Polaris drives and nine homes were evacuated near the 200 block of Wonderview Drive. Mud poured into at least one home on Maginn Drive, and people were evacuated from the houses on Polaris for fear of a slide.

Jeff and Carol Deeter returned to their home late Tuesday morning to find several firefighters standing on their bed, handing Jeff Deeter’s suits out a bedroom window.

“They were 17 very expensive suits,” the homeowner said. “We just threw them in a bag and took them to the cleaners.”

Malibou Lake in the Santa Monica Mountains rose 10 to 12 feet above its normal level, flooding 30 homes by Tuesday evening, said longtime resident Robert McLaughlin. Some homeowners in this small Santa Monica Mountains community had evacuated, others had retreated to the upper levels of their two-story homes.

Neighbors on higher ground offered spare bedrooms. “We have a way of taking care of ourselves,” McLaughlin said.

Although a bridge and several roadways just off the lake were also under water, emergency workers were not worried. The lake overflows so often that residents know how to cope.

“The people down there are so prepared for it and so used to it they don’t even call us any more,” said Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Tom Fullerton.

In the Antelope Valley, rain pooled in many major intersections, resulting in a handful of street closures in Lancaster, Palmdale and Quartz Hill, including portions of 20th Street West, 45th Street West, 52nd Street West, 60th Street West, West Avenue J, West Avenue K and West Avenue I.

Several schools on the west side of the Antelope Valley closed early because of street flooding problems.

Across the San Fernando Valley, phone service and electric power were disrupted in many neighborhoods, sometimes for hours. But most roads remained open Tuesday, including Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue, and commuters were reporting delays of about half an hour. The mountain routes of Beverly Glen and Topanga Canyon boulevards were closed.

At least one lane of the San Diego Freeway northbound through the Sepulveda Pass was closed at Getty Center because of a mudslide. The southbound Golden State Freeway was closed in Newhall Pass and a truck crash closed all lanes of the Golden State just south of the intersection with the San Diego Freeway for two hours. Just after 10 a.m., two semi-trailer trucks jackknifed through the center divider, spraying chunks of concrete into oncoming traffic and spilling about 100 gallons of diesel fuel.

As of Tuesday evening, Caltrans officials reported that the southbound Golden State Freeway connector to the northbound Antelope Valley Freeway remained closed, as did the southbound Golden State truck lanes from Weldon Canyon to the interchange of the two freeways.

Valley schools were only slightly disrupted, said Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman Bill Rivera.

Nineteen students from the Topanga Canyon area who attend Revere Middle School and Palisades High School on the Westside were placed in emergency shelters in Pacific Palisades because they could not reach their homes and school officials could not contact their parents. They faced a night in the shelters if their parents did not make contact.

Maintenance workers were dispatched to Dixie Canyon Elementary School in Sherman Oaks to repair “extensive leaking,” and the students of Reseda’s Cleveland High were allowed into the faculty cafeteria so they wouldn’t have to eat outdoors.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials said they expect all campuses--except Topanga Elementary--to be open today but parents should tune to morning radio and TV news reports for any late changes. The district’s television station, KLCS-Channel 58, also will broadcast school closures.

Cal State Northridge was closed at 2 p.m., “out of concern for faculty and students to get home safely,” a spokesman said. It was scheduled to reopen at 8 a.m. today.

Throughout the Santa Clarita area, the storm turned streets and highways into mud-filled rivers, and sent boulders and other debris crashing down from the hillsides, snarling local traffic. But city officials by nightfall said they knew of no serious flooding of homes or businesses in the area.

About 50 families were stranded in the Sand Canyon area of the Santa Clarita Valley when two roads leading to the affluent rural neighborhood were submerged in a rapid torrent of water about 25 feet wide. But Keith Wambach, 58, said no one in the neighborhood seemed to be panicking.

“We just sort of get our supplies early and tough it out,” he said.

Nearby, residents of 100 mobile homes at the Polynesian Mobile Home Park in Newhall were cut off from vehicle traffic for much of the day due to flooding caused by tree trunks that were partially damming a wash.

A mudslide blocked all four lanes of Sierra Highway between Santa Clarita and the Golden State Freeway and another mudslide crossed San Fernando Road, closing several streets near William S. Hart Park and blocking two non-rush hour Metrolink trains.

Sheriff’s deputies in Santa Clarita said an unidentified man believed to be in his 20s tried to surf in a creek near the intersection of Placerita Canyon and Sand Canyon roads at about 4 p.m., but was chased off by deputies blaring a warning from a sheriff’s helicopter.

“He actually had a full surfboard, too,” Deputy Mark Cohen said. “I don’t know how you’d surf in that.”

Along Sunburst Avenue in Pacoima, postal carrier Kazi Hossein trudged from house to house in his white pith helmet and yellow poncho, trying in vain to shield mail from the rain and running across intersections to avoid cars whose drivers couldn’t see him.

“I don’t like this, man,” he grumbled. “I don’t like it at all.”

At Topanga’s Inn of the Seventh Ray, an organic restaurant and canyon landmark, the normally sylvan creekside patio was completely underwater and owner Lucille Yaney paced back and forth on the rooftop in full rain gear, gesturing as she chanted, “Out, out, stop the rain.”

“What I’m doing, by the way, is calling to the elementals to stop the rain,” Yaney said. “I am not freaking out.”