THE CALIFORNIA DELUGE : Laguna Beach Downtown Hit Hard--Again : Disaster: For second time in a week, storm channel overflows, sending rainwater, mud and debris cascading through the heart of the besieged town.

The breaking point came about 3 p.m. Tuesday when, suddenly, the daylong drizzle turned into a hammering downpour.

Nearly an inch of rain fell in 60 minutes alone, and for the second time in less than a week, the heart of this woodsy art colony was swamped with mud, rainwater and debris.

With floodwaters lapping at their storefronts, shop owners grabbed for sandbags while shoppers fled the boutiques and restaurants, creating gridlock along soggy, puddle-strewn Laguna Canyon Road and Coast Highway, the only routes in and out of town.

The muddy mess caused 40 downtown businesses to be evacuated, while in Laguna Canyon, nearly 100 children were temporarily stranded at a preschool until firefighters could drive them to safety.

“We had just barely cleaned the town up and now we’re under a couple of feet of mud again,” Laguna Beach firefighter Patrick Brennan said from the safety of the department’s command post on Ocean Avenue, less than a block from the raging Pacific Ocean.

The onslaught had longtime residents such as Laguna Beach Police Lt. Danell Adams calling it the worst storm they could remember.

“I haven’t seen this much water in the 21 years I’ve worked here,” Adams said.

Once again, a downtown storm drain that catches the flow from Laguna Canyon was the culprit.

A cascading wave of debris spilled over the cement channel and ran down the narrow streets around Main Beach in the heart of the village.

A crowd of curious onlookers in rain gear seemed fascinated by the flood and watched the brown waters crest over the channel and slam into the Art Deco General Telephone building across the street.

The building is a critical switching center that provides telephone service throughout Laguna Beach.

“It’s just blowing out,” said Harry Musante, 40, a lifelong Laguna Beach resident who stopped to join the crowd.

Larry Cox, a GTE spokesman, said the company was prepared and managed to clear the building before phone service was interrupted, as it was during last week’s storm when water flooded the building.

“My understanding is that we’ve successfully pumped back those waters that were encroaching that switching center,” said Cox. “It’s the same switching center that flooded a week ago and disrupted service to about 25,000 customers.”

Last week, Cox said, nine feet of water and a foot of mud had to be pumped out of the center, which controls three remote switches for all of Laguna Beach’s GTE phone service.

Along deserted Coast Highway, a frustrated Ron Paradis, owner of the evacuated Johnny Rockets restaurant, said that the storms and the city’s drainage problems had cost him nearly $10,000 in business. His restaurant was also hit hard and evacuated last week.

“The city, when they rebuilt Main Beach, they in effect built a dam,” said Paradis, 54, standing under an umbrella. “There’s no place for the water to go.”

Main Beach, which residents call their “window to the sea,” again took the brunt of the storm. The already battered boardwalk took another beating--a water main broke under Coast Highway near the beach, and the main traffic signal collapsed amid the onslaught.

Elsewhere, road closures prompted city officials to evacuate the Laguna Beach Boys and Girls Club, which serves as the city’s main after-school day-care center. About 150 youngsters from the city’s two elementary schools and junior high school were taken by bus to a Red Cross shelter in Laguna Beach High School’s gymnasium.

Throughout the afternoon, the gym was crammed with cots, blankets and shivering children who were comforted by volunteers with snacks and teddy bears until their parents arrived.

Said Daniel Sorino, 9: “I saw it. I saw the big flood. It was like brown mud.”

Next to the downtown area, Laguna Canyon was the hardest hit.

The canyon’s swollen creek flooded the city animal shelter, causing all the animals to be evacuated to nearby kennels, and again flooded a cluster of homes near El Toro Road.

One resident, John Phillips, 35, had just cleaned up from last week’s storm when his property was surrounded by mud that damaged the 1942 Ford “woody” he has been restoring.

“It was vicious,” said a distraught Phillips, a general contractor whose wood shop was also muddied. “I can’t deal with it. I’d like to sell my inventory and get out of here.”

In a replay of last week, Anneliese’s School in Laguna Canyon was again cut off from the highway by a rising creek, prompting an emergency rescue call to firefighters.

“It was real critical in Laguna Canyon,” said Jeff Taylor, a city firefighter. “We were up to our floorboards in the firetruck with water.”

But because they had performed a similar rescue last week, firefighters were ready Tuesday, Brennan said.

“The one good thing is we were prepared this time and got the kids out earlier,” Brennan said. “But this was a tough day. All day it didn’t look like the storm was going to do much, but conditions changed very rapidly.”

Times staff writer Len Hall contributed to this report.