County Braces for Next Round of Rainstorms : Weather: Emergency crews are ready as forecast calls for two to three inches of rain along the coast, four to five in the foothills.

Orange County emergency workers are bracing for an onslaught of rain today through the end of the week that may prove as damaging as January’s downpour that flooded homes and streets and tore out a chunk of the Laguna Beach boardwalk.

Dean Jones, meteorologist for WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times, predicted that heavy rain will pummel the county until Friday night.

By then, he said, two to three inches of rain will have fallen in the county’s coastal areas and valleys, and four to five inches in the county’s eastern foothills and canyons, threatening mudslides on hills already saturated by last weekend’s storm.

Less intense showers will linger until Sunday, with the sun perhaps emerging Sunday, he added.

Emergency preparations were underway Wednesday in Laguna Beach, Buena Park and Seal Beach, cities that suffered some of the worst damage in the early January rains.

Those cities made certain their storm drains were clear, got ready to activate emergency control centers, put work crews on standby and provided free bags and sand to merchants and homeowners wanting to protect their property against flooding.

“Some reports indicate that this has the possibility of being the worse storm yet, even worse than January,” Laguna Beach Fire Chief Bill Edmundson said. “If it slows down and drops more water, our saturated hillsides will really be in trouble. . . . We will have mudslides this time. The ground is just too wet.”

The amount of damage that the storm causes, emergency agency officials agreed, will depend on whether the rainfall is concentrated in a short time period, which would overtax flood-control channels.

In Laguna Beach, Edmundson said, emergency workers would keep a sharp watch on the channel that in January overflowed and inundated the city’s main business district.

“If we continue to get heavy rains and it approaches a flood, we will warn the people on Broadway to lock their doors and sandbag their businesses,” he said.

Many Laguna Beach merchants have kept sandbags in place for the last couple months and know what to do.

“Our merchants are survivors,” he said.

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Storm-triggered floods, Edmundson said, also could wash out more of the boardwalk on Main Beach, which sustained about $300,000 in damage in January and has yet to be repaired.

Loren Tuthill, deputy director of public works for Buena Park, said: “We have trucks loaded with barricades and sandbags and service crews running 24 hours a day on standby.”

On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished pouring concrete to repair a storm drain that collapsed under Western Avenue in Buena Park in January.

Another storm channel that collapsed under Beach Boulevard, Tuthill said, has been rebuilt to “carry roughly 30% more water than before.”

Seal Beach City Manager Jerry L. Bankston said that in anticipation of the storm the city had stockpiled barricades and warning lights for closing flooded roads and fuel for operating emergency pumps.

The Orange County Environmental Management Agency on Wednesday placed heavy, earthmoving equipment in eastern Orange County, poised to be used to remove any mud and debris that the new storm washes into major canyon highways.

Bill Reiter, the county’s public works operations manager, said the Trabuco Canyon Road bridge would remain closed until the creek waters are low enough to install guard rails that broke off in last Sunday’s storm.

The guard rails, Reiter said, are designed to break in heavy rain to prevent debris from accumulating in the waterway, which would cause additional flooding.

Because of the bridge closure, canyon residents now have to drive about five miles to the nearest gas station, and some commuters to neighboring Rancho Santa Margarita have seen their drive time jump from five minutes to 45 minutes.

Merchants such as Steve Shouia, who owns the Emory General Store, say they have experienced a large decrease in business.

“We’ve taken a big hit,” Shouia said. “They’re not coming over the bridge to us anymore.”

Times correspondent Frank Messina contributed to this report.