Runoff From Rainstorm Kills Woman : Weather: San Diegan drowns when water floods basement apartment. Ventura County residents were warned that hillside above their homes could come tumbling down.

The Arctic storm that dumped more than an inch of rain on parts of Southern California by Tuesday afternoon drowned a disabled San Diego woman and snarled commuter traffic with a massive mudslide in Santa Monica and freeway collisions.

A torrent of water broke through the door of Joyce Elaine Isaacs’ basement apartment in east San Diego shortly before 11 a.m., trapping her in the room along with dozens of her prized cockatiels.

Firefighters and lifeguard rescue crews said the wall of water reached nearly to the ceiling of the unit, which occupied the basement floor of a single-family home. The water in the basement was so deep and dirty that it took lifeguards several minutes to find Isaacs’ body, officials said.

Isaacs, 37, who had to use a wheelchair, suffered from an undisclosed disability that limited her ability to escape and made rescue more difficult, said Capt. Lynda Lynch-Green of the San Diego Fire Department.

The woman’s birds also died, said a spokesman for the medical examiner, whose office ruled the death an apparent drowning, pending an autopsy.

The woman’s husband--who was at work when his wife drowned--and several neighbors blamed the flood on a defective storm drain on a nearby street that flooded Tuesday morning and sent the wall of water cascading into the couple’s apartment.

“The electricity had charged the water, so fire units couldn’t get in until San Diego Gas & Electric arrived,” Lynch-Green said. “They shut off the power and cut a hole in the upstairs apartment. The lifeguards went down to see if they could save the woman. But by the time they reached her, the woman was dead. . . .

“Unfortunately, she never called 911 to say, ‘I’m caught here,’ in which case we might have had a better chance of reaching her, and sooner,” Lynch-Green said.

More than an inch of rain fell in San Diego between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.

In the Los Angeles area, Pacific Coast Highway was closed from the McClure Tunnel to Chautauqua Boulevard on Tuesday after tons of rain-soaked earth spilled down from a Santa Monica hillside and out across the roadway.

The mudslide blocked three lanes, prompting authorities to route traffic around the area. Caltrans officials estimated that the highway would be reopened early today.

The slide capped a day in which the average commute was 30 minutes longer in Los Angeles, and there was a 200% increase in freeway collisions, with one person killed and another hurt in a four-car crash on the Pomona Freeway in East Los Angeles. The California Highway Patrol reported 295 traffic incidents between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m., compared to 106 for the same time period last Friday.

Forecasters are calling for mostly sunny skies today, but authorities in Ventura County say the damage may already have been done to hillsides above the tiny community of La Conchita near the Ventura-Santa Barbara County border.

Residents there remain on guard after authorities warned that the rain-soaked hillside above their homes could come tumbling down at any moment.

“It looks like we dodged the bullet for now,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Chuck Buttell said of the rain-sodden hillside perched above the 198 homes in the town sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean, the Ventura Freeway and the green, unstable hillsides.

“We made it through Monday night without the whole place coming down,” he said. “But the worst may still be ahead of us as the rain settles deeper into the hillside.”

Since late last week, the hillsides have moved an estimated 18 feet, officials said. Deep brown gashes of raw earth protrude from a thick green covering of coastal grasses. How the hillsides became so waterlogged has not been determined, a county fire official said.

A ridge of high pressure is building over the West Coast and will bring clear weather by this afternoon and temperatures warming up into the 70s by the weekend, said Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

Brack said: “It’s going to be dry.”

Times staff writer Richard Simon in Los Angeles and community correspondent J. E. Mitchell in Ventura County contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rain Gauge

Downtown Los Angeles has already received almost all of its average yearly amount of rain.

Cumulative Civic Center Reading Annual Average: 14.77 Year to Date: 13.85 January Average: 2.92 Jan. total: 12.56 February Average: 2.96 Feb. total: 1.29 ***

Other Readings (in inches)

Rainfall Tues. Jan. 1-Feb. 14 Civic Center .94 13.85 Long Beach .53 14.22 Monrovia 1.71 17.45 Santa Clarita 1.0 17.90 Riverside 1.17 9.53 San Diego 1.35 9.50 Santa Ana .80 .13.47 Santa Barbara .79 24.46 Santa Monica .61 .18.05 Ventura .59 18.02

Source: Weather Data Inc.