Crashes, Delays Pile Up on Wet Roads

Bumper cars was the name of the game Thursday for many San Fernando Valley drivers attempting to navigate oil-slick roadways in the first significant rainstorm of the season.

Commuters from the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys endured the greatest delays--between 30 and 90 minutes--as a series of crashes clogged main roads.

Flash-flood warnings were posted and residents in the burned-over Calabasas-Malibu area were told to watch for mud and rock slides, but no serious incidents had been reported by nightfall.

The weather was expected to improve today as showers--which the National Weather Service predicted would be heavy at times through the night--give way to partly cloudy skies.

Many of the longest traffic delays Thursday were attributed to out-of-control semi-trailer trucks that careened off roadways and jackknifed across lanes, backing up traffic for miles throughout the day, the California Highway Patrol reported.

“There are just a lot of people crashing. They are just not paying attention,” grumbled CHP Officer Dwight McDonald at the West Valley headquarters. “People continue to drive too fast, too close. They change lanes like they’re driving in the summer. They crash. They roll over. And they make us earn our pay.”

The CHP doubled the number of officers on patrol to handle the workload.

The weather also prompted homeless shelters to open Thursday evening for the first time in more than a year. At least one school, plagued with chronic roof leaks, was forced to evacuate students from classrooms.

Despite a multitude of accidents--estimated at more than 500 throughout the Los Angeles area--officials said most injuries were relatively minor. In Ventura County, a single-car rollover on California 126 near Fillmore took the life of a Camarillo man, authorities said.

Troubles in the Santa Clarita area, where visibility was greatly reduced by fog, began shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday, when a semi-trailer truck crashed in the southbound truck lanes of the Golden State Freeway tunnel through Newhall Pass, closing that route for most of the day, said CHP Lt. Bob Callahan at the Newhall headquarters.

Problems multiplied as other big rigs skidded out of control, including one that fell more than 30 feet over the side of the Golden State truck route to the Antelope Valley Freeway, leaving the cab lying in the southbound truck lanes below. Surprisingly, the driver emerged uninjured, officials said.

The driver of a trash truck smashed through the center divider on the southbound Golden State at the San Diego Freeway about 7 a.m., closing lanes in both directions for three hours, according to the CHP.

Many of the crashes triggered further pileups, Callahan said. On the northbound Golden State near Magic Mountain Parkway, a car involved with a big rig went over the side. While emergency workers were cleaning that up, another truck and car went over the side at the same spot. Then three cars collided in the southbound lanes at Lyons Avenue. While officers were investigating that incident, another car spun out of control, slamming into one of the unoccupied CHP units, Callahan said.

By midafternoon Thursday, three truck crashes within 30 minutes at the 3,000-foot summit of the Antelope Valley Freeway forced closure of the freeway at Escondido Canyon Road for several hours.

At Granada Hills High School, where a leaky roof has plagued the school for at least a decade, teachers, administrators and students once again dodged drops from ceilings and several classrooms were evacuated.

“This is like a nightmare from hell,” said Stephanie Schwartz, a computer science teacher.

The school district is in the process of replacing the rotted roof, but it is currently covered only with plastic, which is not yet completely installed.