Storm Trashes Local Beaches : Weather: Cleanup underway after first winter rains wash tons of debris into ocean. Second front is due today.

Tons of trash and even telephone poles that were swept to sea in Orange County’s first winter storm kept ocean cleanup crews busy Thursday, as surfers dodged lobster traps ripped loose by the surf.

Lifeguards on Jet Skis busily removed the traps and kept watch on the powerful 6-foot waves still crashing on the beach during the lull between storms.

“The traps are dangerous, because when they get inside the surf line, the surfers have a tendency to get tangled up in the lines,” said Lt. Michael Beuerlein, a Huntington Beach lifeguard. “Some surfers in San Diego County have drowned after getting tangled up by them.”

A second storm is expected to arrive today, bringing a quarter of an inch to half an inch of rain in the county’s coastal areas and up to an inch of rain in the foothills and mountains of Southern California, said Curtis Brack, a meteorologist for WeatherData, which provides forecasts for The Times.

“We’re looking at showers that can start in the late morning or noon and end by” tonight, Brack said. “Saturday and Sunday will be partly cloudy, and it looks like the next storm is on Tuesday. But for now, there’s only a slight chance of showers expected from it for Orange County.”

Storms routinely dislodge five or six lobster traps, Beuerlein said, but the 10- to 12-foot breakers at the peak of Wednesday’s storm “generated such large surf that we had twice that much.”

The large metal cages are connected to buoy markers with thick rope or lines and are marked by commercial fishermen. Lifeguards said they would notify the state Department of Fish and Game to contact the owners so that they can retrieve the traps.

But the traps, wooden 2-by-4s and even a few telephone poles that washed down the San Gabriel River did not keep surfers from their appointed waves.

Surfer Rick Andino, 37, of Fountain Valley said that he has surfed all over the world and that the waves that broke Wednesday in Orange County rivaled those in Hawaii.

“It breaks like that only about once in five years here,” said Andino, who surfed with a small pack of expert surfers at Seal Beach’s south jetty. “It was big, but it was good.”

Andino said the surfers “were beyond the lobster traps, and that was an eerie feeling, paddling through the traps. I didn’t want to get caught in any of those lines, because it could take you down.”

The surf is expected to decrease slightly today and Saturday, with waves in the five- to eight-foot range, said Sean Collins, who forecasts waves at Surfline/Wavetrak in Huntington Beach.

Wednesday’s storm also pushed ashore the remaining stern section of the fishing vessel Bright Star, which had capsized the night of Nov. 20, killing one man.

The boat’s debris was found at the bluffs in northern Huntington Beach. The boating accident was not related to a storm.

But Beuerlein did caution small boaters to listen to a weather channel before going out.

“Boaters have to be especially on alert,” Beuerlein said, “because we have a reef off the Huntington Beach cliffs about a mile out, and 12-foot waves were breaking out there during this storm. It doesn’t happen very often, but you don’t want to be in a small boat out there.”

The county’s Health Care Agency recommends against entering ocean water for at least three days after the rain stops because of bacteria levels. Larry Honeybourne, a health agency spokesman, said that this is especially true near outlets for storm drains and river mouths.

“The first rainfall of the season literally takes everything that’s been sitting in the storm drains since the last major rainfall,” Honeybourne said.