Area Soaked as 5 Die in Wrecks

More than 500 people were involved in traffic accidents Monday, two of them fatal, as the biggest storm of the season hit Southern California, creating a commuter nightmare by closing the Golden State Freeway in Sun Valley and triggering minor rockslides and flooding on the charred Malibu foothills.

The worst accident was on California 126, about two miles outside Santa Clarita, where three men were killed when their car collided head-on with a semi-trailer truck in an accident caused by the rain, the California Highway Patrol said.

The crash occurred shortly before 4 p.m., just west of Chiquito Canyon Road, on a portion of the two-lane highway known locally as “blood alley” because of its history of fatal wrecks.

The dead were identified as three Fillmore men, all 35 years old. Their names were not released pending notification of relatives. The driver of the semi, Daniel Babineaux, 37, of Ventura, was not injured, the CHP said.

In Orange County, a grisly rear-end collision in San Clemente on the northbound lanes of the San Diego Freeway killed two men riding in a car trunk and critically injured two others, also in the trunk. None of the victims were identified. Throughout the day, the slick roads caused other traffic accidents, including a number of jackknifed big-rig trucks and vehicles sliding off the slippery freeways.

By Monday night there had been 20 SigAlerts and 525 accidents, according to the CHP. And a number of freeways were still clogged at 9 p.m.

A mudslide and an accident involving a large truck combined to create a major traffic jam in both directions on the Golden State Freeway in the Sun Valley area at about 7 p.m., the CHP said.

On the northbound side of the freeway, three traffic lanes were caked with mud and gravel by the slide, which was caused by a debris-clogged drainage ditch on a hill overlooking the freeway just west of the Roscoe Boulevard overcrossing, which diverted water down a muddy hill, Caltrans officials said.

At roughly the same time, the truck collided with a car on the southbound side of the Golden State, just south of the Hollywood Freeway. No one was injured in the crash, but the CHP closed the freeway in both directions between the Hollywood Freeway and Sunland Boulevard and traffic was diverted onto the Hollywood Freeway and local surface streets, creating backups that stretched for miles and lasted for hours.

“There’s heavy traffic everywhere, but the 5 is a mess,” CHP Officer Shirley Gaines said Monday night. “The freeways have been jammed all day and it’s taking a long time for them to clear up because of the rain.”

Two major San Fernando Valley thoroughfares were closed before the evening rush hour and were expected to remain off-limits to motorists all night, due to the possibility of flooding in the Sepulveda Dam flood-control basin, LAPD officials said.

Officials with the Los Angeles district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers closed off all portions of the basin behind the Sepulveda Dam shortly after 3 p.m. The dam, which holds back runoff from heavy rainstorms to prevent the Los Angeles River from flooding the city to the south, is designed to store runoff water in the basin, flooding a large area which is used as a city park in dry weather.

Police have acted swiftly to close the area to traffic ever since an incident several years ago when rapidly rising floodwaters trapped several cars. The drivers, who sought refuge on the auto roofs, had to be rescued by helicopters.

Burbank Boulevard was closed between Sepulveda Boulevard and Hayvenhurst Avenue, and Woodley Avenue was closed between Victory and Burbank boulevards until further notice.

“It’s not going to be pretty out there during rush hour today,” said Mimi Martin, an LAPD traffic supervisor. “But we can’t let cars drive through there. They’ll drown.”

The driver of another large truck crashed into the sidewall of a connector ramp over the Ronald Reagan Freeway in Pacoima, leaving the truck perilously straddling the side of the ramp, the CHP said.

The accident occurred at about 1 p.m. on the ramp joining the northbound Golden State freeway to the westbound Reagan freeway.

The concrete barrier prevented the truck from plunging onto the eastbound Reagan freeway 40 feet below, but the impact knocked loose several chunks of concrete, one of which smashed the windshield of a pickup truck driven by Rudy Ayala, 34, of San Juan Capistrano, who was en route to make a delivery to a Pacoima business. Ayala was not injured.

By Monday night, 1.64 inches of rain had fallen at the Civic Center and 3 inches had fallen in Pasadena, with more rain forecast for today.

Snow levels were expected to drop to 4,000 feet in Northern California and 6,000 feet in the southern Sierra Nevada by late Monday.

“The entire state will be seeing scattered showers and periods of rain and snow at the higher elevations” through today, said Curtis Brack of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “It’s probably going to lighten up somewhat [today] but it’s still going to be cloudy and generally rainy across the state.”

Brack blamed the precipitation on a huge cold front over the eastern Pacific that stretched from the Gulf of Alaska to Hawaii.

The quick-moving storm hit from southern Oregon to the Mexican border, with the strongest rains in Southern and Central California. The National Weather Service issued flash flood watches for burn areas in Los Angeles and Ventura counties through today.

Steady rain triggered minor rock falls and flooding on the denuded slopes overlooking Malibu, where an October wildfire burned more than 13,000 acres. Officials closed Malibu Canyon Road for several hours Monday evening.

Although Malibu city officials said it would take several days of heavy rain to saturate the soil and trigger mudslides, they warned residents to sandbag their property and avoid driving on roads through the community’s rocky canyons.

“We don’t really expect significant mudflow,” said John Clement, Malibu’s director of public works. “But in my three years in Malibu, I’ve learned not to be surprised what new mountain is going to fall next.”

By Monday afternoon, trucks fitted with bulldozer blades were clearing rocks from canyon roads and local fire stations were distributing hundreds of sandbags. Malibu city officials warned that there was little they could do, however, to prevent major mudslides if the rain continues for several days.

After the firestorms of 1993, Malibu received emergency funding to brace for mudslides the next winter. No such measures will be taken this winter because federal authorities told the city they will not pay for them, officials said.

Among the small number of Malibu residents who were sandbagging their homes was Sharon Barovsky, who lives on Malibu Road. Barovsky stuffed damp copies of old newspapers between the cracks of burlap sandbags, looking up at a muddy hillside that loomed over her home, which faces the blustery Pacific Ocean.

“We didn’t want to wait,” said Barovsky, 56, pointing to the brown trickle of mud that was already seeping through her wall of sandbags. “I’m one of those compulsive people who thinks she can stem the tides of nature.”

Times staff writers David Haldane and Josh Meyer and correspondents Steve Ryfle and Scott Steepleton contributed to this story.