State Slammed by Deadly Winter Storm

A harsh winter storm stretching from the Sierra Nevada to the sea may have caused as many as eight deaths Sunday, as car crashes piled up from Victorville to Santa Rosa and a private plane slammed into a dry lake bed in eastern San Bernardino County.

The moisture-laden cold front swept into the state late Friday, dumping up to eight feet of snow in the high Sierra and grounding commercial airliners in Reno and Sacramento. On Sunday, rain and winds of up to 50 mph moved into Southern California, knocking down power lines from Santa Monica to the Mojave.

Four people, including two children, died Sunday afternoon when their van spun out of control on rain-slicked Interstate 15 and slammed into the center divider of the freeway north of Victorville, a CHP dispatcher said.

Four others were injured in the crash, the cause of which was under investigation by the California Highway Patrol. The names of the dead and injured were not immediately available.

Bad weather was cited as a possible cause for the crash of a private plane carrying four people out of Las Vegas on Sunday morning. San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Morgan said witnesses reported seeing the plane go into a tailspin and plummet into a dry lake bed near Lucerne Valley in eastern San Bernardino County about 10:45 a.m. There were no survivors.

In a replay of last weekend’s windstorms, downed power lines from Rialto to Santa Monica cut power to about 20,000 customers.

“It seems like we’re having this every week,” said Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spokesman Ed Freudenburg.

Rain and wind in the San Francisco Bay Area knocked out power to thousands of customers and prompted urban and small stream flood advisories in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties.

Curtis Brack, a forecaster with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said the intermittent rain that dumped 0.38 of an inch on the Los Angeles Civic Center--and about two inches on Mt. Wilson--should be gone by today, and will not return for the rest of the week.

Los Angeles is “going to have a sunny Christmas,” Brack said.

But first, the havoc:

The rain triggered mudslides on the Antelope Valley Freeway at Golden Valley Road near Santa Clarita. Large mud flows also blocked the freeway’s northbound slow lane at Placerita Canyon Road in the same area. Flooding forced the closure of the Sepulveda Basin in Van Nuys.

The CHP reported a surge in traffic crashes, but most were minor. “We’ve got a bunch of accidents all over town,” CHP Officer Ken Lane said. “We’re not doing well.”

A Los Angeles city firefighter responding to an accident on the Golden State Freeway at Roxford Street in Sylmar suffered minor injuries Sunday morning, when he was struck by a vehicle as he was getting off his fire engine.

Santa Ana Fire Department officials said about 50 people were left homeless when the ceilings of six apartment units at 1001 North Flower St. collapsed at 9 a.m. from the weight of accumulated water. There were no injuries.

The roof of the complex, which includes 36 units, had been undergoing repairs, and the damaged apartments were covered by partial roofs when the rain began falling Sunday, officials said. The apartments were left uninhabitable, and Red Cross officials were scrambling to find temporary shelter for the tenants.

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There were subtler disruptions. At the Trudy and Norman Luis Valley Shelter in North Hollywood, volunteers were ready to churn out 12 tons of artificial snow as a treat for hundreds of homeless children who were taking part in the shelter’s toy giveaway. But the weather wouldn’t let it snow.

“It’s awful . . . our snow has been rained on,” said David Libby, a spokesman for the eighth annual toy giveaway held for 300 homeless children from the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. “But the kids aren’t disappointed because they just want to see Santa.”

If they wanted snow, the children simply could have looked to the northeast, where another two feet of snow were expected to fall on the Sierra before the storm subsides there later today.

“It’s just incredible,” said Ray Collins, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. “We knew the storm had the potential for heavy snow, but there’s no way we could have known we would get that much out of it. They’ll be talking about this one for a long time.”

The snow began late Friday afternoon. By Saturday, most Tahoe-area highways, including Interstate 80 over Donner Summit and U.S. 50 over Echo Summit, were closed. Those highways connect Sacramento to the Reno-Tahoe area.

On Sunday, vacationers swapped tales of 11-hour drives from the San Francisco Bay Area or Sacramento to Lake Tahoe. For most, the journeys were in vain, as many ski areas were closed Sunday by “whiteout” conditions.

“It’s a winter wonderland on the first day of winter,” said Lisa Carroll, a clerk at the Tahoe City Inn. “It’s just a little too much.”

One victim of the snow was Jeff Kindred of Auburn, who was stranded Sunday in Truckee.

“I just hope they get it cleared and plowed soon,” he said. “I don’t mind waiting, but I’d like to be home by Christmas.”

At some Lake Tahoe hotels, only about half of the people who made reservations actually arrived.

“We love it when it does this,” said Mitch Packard, manager of the half-empty Chinquapin resort. “Of course, I live up here and don’t have to worry about sitting in a car for 10 hours.”

Times staff writer H.G. Reza and correspondents Ed Bond and Sharon Moeser contributed to this report.