Raging Creek Sweeps O.C. Boy to His Death

Yet another winter storm pummeled Orange County on Tuesday, claiming the life of an 11-year-old boy who fell into the swift-moving waters of Trabuco Creek as slashing rains snarled traffic and shut down schools and amusement parks in some of the worst flooding in years.

Firefighters and swift-water rescue teams found the boy’s body about 9:30 p.m. along the northeastern edge of O’Neill Regional Park, according to Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young.

“Obviously, this is not a place to be on a rainy night,” Young said. “We have at least that (fatality), and we may have more because we still have people unaccounted for.”

The tragedy unfolded about 8 p.m., when a member of a family notified the Fire Department that the boy had fallen in the rain-swollen creek, and at least nine adults immediately jumped in to save him, Young said.

Several people were trying to cross the creek holding onto a rope when it broke, causing them to lose their footing, according to witnesses. Three made it out, but the boy did not. Others in the party then jumped in to attempt a rescue. As the boy clung to his father’s shoulders, rescuers somehow tied a rope to the boy’s waist and tried to cross again, said Clair Olson, 22.

On the second attempt, Olson said she heard the boy panic and began screaming, “not to take him over.”

Then the father lost his footing and the boy was swept away. At least one of the rescuers was hospitalized.

Earlier in the day, Tuesday’s weather came close to claiming the life of a 14-year-old San Juan Capistrano boy, who found himself carried down the floodwaters of San Juan Creek before being rescued by county public works employees.

Throughout the county, the second major storm in two weeks lashed out at neighborhoods from Laguna Beach to Seal Beach to Santa Ana, hammering homes, cars and people along the way.

The storm saved some of its fiercest punches for Laguna, where the rain triggered mudslides, caused hundreds of children to flee from school and threw traffic into a virtual standstill by 4 p.m.

At the height of the evening rush hour, free-flowing water was cascading down Laguna’s narrow, winding roads, with the city accessible only from the south. At the same time, mud was beginning its slow descent down sodden hillsides.

“It’s completely out of control there now,” said Bill Reiter, manager of the county’s Public Works Operations Department.

Compared to the Jan. 4 cloudburst that dropped up to six inches of rain in a two-hour period, Reiter said, “It’s not as ferocious a storm, but yet, it did its own share of damage.”

It almost claimed the life of Capistrano’s Matt Schwartz, 14, who slipped while crossing San Juan Creek and found himself floating for a mile and a half before being rescued by three employees of the county’s Public Works Department.

“He was almost frozen. He was yelling and screaming the whole time,” said Charles Rosas, 41, who, with co-worker Gabe Tinoco, 37, pulled the youth to safety while Jess Prado, 25, radioed for help.

Freeways Hit Hard

Much of the storm’s impact was felt on county freeways. The Santa Ana Freeway slowed to a crawl in Santa Ana and Lake Forest, with the California Highway Patrol reporting 107 weather-related accidents by 7 p.m. Numerous roadways and lanes were closed as the deluge persisted into the evening.

Late Tuesday, a giant sinkhole emerged in Buena Park at the corner of Western Avenue and Melrose Street. Covering three lanes on Western--one northbound, the others southbound--the rupture left traffic officials amazed that no one was injured.

Later in the day, the slow lane of northbound the Santa Ana Freeway collapsed just north of Grand Avenue in Santa Ana, requiring repairs well past midnight.

By mid-afternoon, the American Red Cross was operating three shelters, housing 11 elderly residents of the Leisure World retirement village in Seal Beach that was devastated during last week’s flooding; an undetermined number at a high school in Garden Grove; and more than 100 Laguna Beach residents, most of them children evacuated from three local schools.

At one point Tuesday afternoon, dozens of Laguna Beach schoolchildren, unable to reach home because school and commercial bus routes were canceled, ended up stranded in front of the local Albertson’s store, with some standing in two feet of water.

“The street was like a river,” said Brittany Wood, a 10-year-old fifth-grader from Top of the World Elementary School in Laguna Beach, which sent 60 students to the shelter at Laguna Beach High School. “Water was going everywhere. Our feet got soaked. We also had to put trash cans under the leaks in our classroom. I was scared. Now I’m scared of going home and finding myself surrounded by water.”

Most of the county shared the girl’s fear, as expectations of rising evacuation totals and further flood-related trauma grew progressively through the evening.

In another part of Laguna, firefighters evacuated 108 children from Anneliese’s Pre-School, just half a block from rain-swollen Laguna Canyon Creek.

At the Corning Nichols Institute, a medical-testing laboratory in San Juan Capistrano, 800 employees were sent home Tuesday because of worries that they would be trapped at the facility 10 miles up the Ortega Highway, which was closed from Interstate 5 to the Riverside County line.

“We evacuated everyone from our two buildings here. They made a giant caravan and drove down the Ortega,” said John Soltys, who called his wife in Dana Point to tell her he was one of two specialists assigned to stay overnight to answer urgent telephone queries from hospitals.

“We’ll be here all night,” Soltys said. “It’s amazing out here. It looks like a typhoon.”

While last week’s storm dropped 5.75 inches in Cypress alone--shattering a 1956 record--Tuesday’s storm scattered steady showers over a wide perimeter.

By 7 p.m., Santiago Peak in the Cleveland National Forest--the county’s highest elevation at 5,600 feet--had recorded 5.16 inches of rain. County officials listed other totals: Brea, 2.40 inches; Cypress, 2.24; Anaheim, 2.60; Santa Ana, 2.95; Laguna Beach, 2.76; Lake Forest, 2.01; San Juan Capistrano, 2.24; San Clemente, 2.09; and Silverado Canyon, 2.17.

Despite the deluge, weather forecasters predicted warmer, drier conditions the rest of the week, with the brunt of the storm expected to assault points well north of Los Angeles--in particular, the San Francisco Bay Area.

Only two of four runways were operating at San Francisco International Airport, delaying up to one hour flights from Orange County and elsewhere.

Amtrak suspended all rail service between Los Angeles and Seattle because tracks between Santa Barbara and San Francisco had washed out.

However, rail service between Los Angeles and San Diego proceeded normally on Tuesday, with one exception: Metrolink reported a 20% increase in ridership on six Orange County trains covering 87 miles, according to spokesman Peter Hidalgo.

Even football emerged as a topic, with officials for the National Weather Service saying that, while Orange County residents could enjoy Sunday’s National Football League playoff games from the comfort of living rooms in a far friendlier climate, Sunday’s game in Candlestick Park between the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers threatens to be a quagmire.

“You’ll have a chance of lingering showers (today in Orange County), and a slight chance of more showers Thursday,” said Curtis Brack, a forecaster with WeatherData, Inc., based in Wichita, Kans. “Then, cross your fingers, for you can expect variable clouds and warmer conditions Friday and Saturday, with only a slight chance of rain on Sunday.

“The major part of this storm is clearly shifting northward,” Brack said. “Southern California will get some relief. Northern California will not get a break all week--especially during the weekend.”

As inconvenient as Tuesday’s downpour was for many, county officials said it was nowhere near as devastating as the storm that blew through Orange County last week, attacking the area with up to six inches in a rush-hour deluge between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

That storm forced the Orange County Board of Supervisors to declare a state of emergency and prompted a request for $20 million in aid from the state, which Gov. Pete Wilson granted on Friday.

By 3 p.m. Tuesday, four major flood control channels that came apart last week, causing more than $3 million in damage, were faring well under temporary repairs that lasted all weekend. And while residents in Cypress, Buena Park and Garden Grove were struggling to recover from last week’s flooding, Tuesday’s paled in comparison.

“We’ve had no damage whatsoever,” said Rick Schooley, a spokesman for the county’s public works division. “Fortunately, it hasn’t all come at once. We can handle a steady rain; it’s the sudden downpour that kills us. So far, we haven’t got that.”

Ravaged Roadways

While flood control channels fared better, Tuesday’s storm ravaged county roadways, with the California Highway Patrol and other agencies enforcing numerous closures, even along the Santa Ana Freeway at the height of rush hour.

Many commuters had to look hard for a good route home Tuesday, as authorities closed flooded and debris-strewn roads all over the county and kept tabs on other soggy trouble spots.

Four major roadways are expected to remain closed early Wednesday, the CHP said.

They are Beach Boulevard from Orangethorpe Avenue to Manchester Avenue in Buena Park; Laguna Canyon Road from the San Diego Freeway to Coast Highway in Laguna Beach; the Ortega Highway from I-5 to the Riverside County line; and Coast Highway at Newport Coast Drive, leading from an unincorporated area into Laguna.

The No. 3 lane of the Santa Ana Freeway northbound near Grand Avenue in Santa Ana is expected to remain closed and cause slowing throughout today, traffic officials said.

Paramedics feared a repeat of Tuesday, when they raced to dozens of rain-related crashes all day.

“Every couple of minutes, we’re going to another one,” said Capt. Dan Young, a spokesman for the Orange County Fire Department.

Unlike last week’s storm, no freeways were completely blocked Tuesday, though sections were flooded in Lake Forest, Santa Ana, Orange and Garden Grove.

Two lanes of the Garden Grove Freeway were shut at Magnolia Avenue in Garden Grove after a big rig smashed through the center divider in Garden Grove. Another crash on the San Diego Freeway in Huntington Beach caused a fuel spill and tied up traffic there, police said.

Barricades were at the ready as police around the county stood by to close streets and intersections that are known to flood.

Caltrans said the latest rains will delay plans to repair the section of Beach Boulevard north of Orangethorpe Avenue that caved in during last week’s flooding. The section has been closed since then and repairs are expected to take 20 working days, the department said.

Traffic Backs Up

The rain flooded many streets around the Santa Ana Civic Center, turning six-lane boulevards into narrow two-lane roads.

So many intersections along Raitt Street in Santa Ana flooded that traffic was backed up for five blocks Tuesday afternoon.

* A few miles north in Anaheim, the rain took its toll on the Magic Kingdom, with both American and foreign visitors having an otherwise perfect day at Disneyland spoiled by Mother Nature. Uncharacteristically, the park closed at 4 p.m. Knott’s Berry Farm closed for the entire day.

“We wanted to avoid the crowds,” said Lisa Lloyd, 32, of Fallbrook, who, like her children--Nicholas, 5, and 8-year-old twins Nathan and Brittany--prepared for the day by wearing a Disneyland raincoat and rain boots. “We decided a rainy day was a good day to avoid them.”

* In the Leisure World retirement village in Seal Beach, the site of some of the worst flooding in last week’s storm, fewer than a dozen people were expected to spend the night in a Red Cross shelter set up in a clubhouse there. The shelter has been operating continuously since the Jan. 4 deluge.

But the situation remained relatively calm in Leisure World Tuesday. Officials said the storm channel that runs through the middle of the sprawling village--and that was the source of last week’s flooding--didn’t have problems.

For the first time since last week’s storm, Leisure World residents were able to receive medical care within the village, when officials established a temporary clinic in the clubhouse near the Red Cross shelter. The Leisure World health care center on Golden Rain Road has been closed since last week’s flooding, officials said.

At mid-morning, a handful of residents watched television and talked quietly in the shelter’s main room at the clubhouse, with several saying they had been spending the nights there since their homes were first flooded last Wednesday. Most said they were unable to go home yet because their dwellings hadn’t dried out and remained wet and cold.

But Marie von Loonq, 65, who moved to Leisure World only three weeks ago, was optimistic that she would be able to return home within a day or two and that the storms would soon end.

“I’m not really worried about the next storm,” von Loon said, looking cheerful in a bright aqua sweater. “It’s an act of God, an act of nature. I feel safe here. I’m just glad there is a place for us here.”

Times Staff Writers David Reyes, Alicia Di Rado, Debbie Kong, Leslie Berkman, David Reyes and Yvette Cabrera and Times Correspondents Jeff Bean, Leslie Earnest, Shelby Grad and Russ Loar contributed to this report.

Storm Coverage

* BUENA PARK--Neighbors flee, worried that last week’s damage was just the beginning. A18

* WATERY DOWNTOWN--Mud and water forced evacuations at 40 downtown Laguna businesses. A19

* DAMAGE AFIELD--Prices for avocados, strawberries, broccoli and oranges are likely to go up. D1

* ADDITIONAL STORIES, PICTURES, GRAPHICS: A18-22, D1, D3

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What’s Coming Up

Tuesday’s downpour should be the last “major dumping” of rain on Southern California, at least for the next few days, according to WeatherData Inc., a private forecasting firm. Here is a look at how the picture is shaping up through the weekend:

1) The basic storm system currently inundating most of the state will shift slowly northward. This is bad news for the flooded areas to the north, which will continue to get rain off and on through the weekend. Showers will continue in Southern California through Wednesday with a slight chance of rain on Thursday. Weather in the south should be dry Friday and Saturday as system shifts.

2) The main jetstream is continuing to come out by Hawaii instead of the Gulf of Alaska. The warmer flow means snow levels are higher than usual in the local mountains and Sierra Nevada.

3) Next chance of rain in the Southland is Sunday. Meteorologists are watching a weak low-pressure area several hundred miles north of Hawaii, which is moving toward the Mainland.

Source: WeatherData Inc.

Researched by PAUL FELDMAN, VICKY McCARGAR / Los Angeles Times