Awash in Accidents : Downpour Wreaks Road Havoc as Some Areas Get up to 5 Inches of Rain

A weather front fresh from Hawaii dumped heavy rain on the Los Angeles region Tuesday, causing headaches for commuters who had to deal with accident-clogged roads, some covered with mud and others closed because of flooding.

But forecasters, who were monitoring a second front making its way to the area from the Oregon coast, warned late in the day that the worst may be yet to come.

The damage inflicted by Tuesday’s rain was evident in the heavy volume of vehicle accidents reported to the California Highway Patrol and to law enforcement agencies.

They included an early morning spin-out on the Costa Mesa Freeway in Orange County that claimed the life of a 40-year-old Orange man, an afternoon collision between two school buses at Pico Boulevard and Beverly Drive in West Los Angeles, and a chain reaction Golden State Freeway pileup that damaged a vehicle driven by pop music star Barry Manilow.

In the San Fernando Valley, the most serious weather-related traffic tie-up was the localized flooding that closed a lane of the Simi Valley Freeway at Tampa Avenue for two hours.

By Tuesday afternoon, the storm had dumped more than 2.2 inches of rain at the Civic Center in downtown Los Angeles. But the San Gabriel Valley and Ventura and Santa Barbara counties bore the brunt of the downpour, reporting 4 to 5 inches of rainfall in some areas in the 24 hours before 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The downpour quickly compensated for what had been an unusually dry winter. While rainfall in Los Angeles had reached only half its normal level for the season on Monday, the area had received 70% of its seasonal average by late Tuesday afternoon.

“This storm has really done some work,” a National Weather Service meteorologist said.

It was a hectic morning for the California Highway Patrol. From 5 to 9 a.m. there were 268 accident calls, a spokesman said. Last Tuesday--during dry, balmy weather--there were only 67 incidents during the morning commute period.

The worst accidents occurred before sunrise, when the freeways had been turned slippery by hours of heavy rain, and took hours to clear.

At 1:20 a.m., a truck fell from a Golden State Freeway overpass and landed on the Pasadena Freeway at Figueroa Street, resulting in the closing of the northbound Pasadena Freeway for the next 5 1/2 hours. Overturned large trucks--one carrying fertilizer, the other lemons--closed the eastbound Artesia Freeway near the Long Beach Freeway transition and the northbound Santa Ana Freeway at Culver respectively after they spilled their loads. The fatal accident in Orange County occurred at 4:30 a.m.

Even during the usually calm midday period, the highways were dotted with disabled vehicles. Between noon and 2:30 p.m., the CHP communications center received 296 calls reporting accidents, a spokesman said.

“That’s definitely a lot of action,” said Pablo Torres, a CHP public affairs officer. “During the dry season, these midday hours are very light.”

Two middle school students and a bus driver suffered minor injuries and were treated at local hospitals after two school buses collided in what Diana Munatones, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, called “a weather-related accident.”

The two school buses, carrying about 60 students between the ages of 11 and 13, collided at Pico Boulevard and Beverly Drive. One of the buses was owned by the Los Angeles district and the other was a Laidlaw bus under contract to the school district.

The buses were taking the students from Emerson Middle School in West Los Angeles to East and South-Central Los Angeles.

Two students were treated for minor back and neck injuries at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and the driver was treated at Beverly Hills Hospital, Munatones said.

The fender-bender involving Barry Manilow occurred about 12:20 p.m. on the southbound Golden State Freeway at 4th Street.

Manilow was driving alone in his vehicle when a large truck two vehicles behind him was unable to stop and rear-ended the car behind the singer’s auto. That car then hit Manilow’s auto, which rear-ended the car in front of him.

Times staff writer Miles Corwin contributed to this story.