Crashes Close I-5 Near Grapevine

The state’s busiest north-south route, the Golden State Freeway, was shut down Friday afternoon near the Grapevine after 28 vehicles were involved in traffic accidents set in dense fog.

Nine people were injured, two of them seriously.

With visibility reduced to 75 feet, big rigs and cars littered a two-mile stretch of Interstate 5 about 65 miles north of Los Angeles.

Two of the injured, both men, were in critical condition at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, a hospital staffer said.

Both sides of the freeway were closed for about three hours.

The crash scene near Gorman was the most dramatic of the rainy day in the Los Angeles region.

Although Southern California was expected to be dry today, showers could return late Sunday, said Jon Erdman, meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts to The Times.

Another storm could arrive Wednesday for the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl football game, Erdman said. The last significant rainfall on the Rose Parade was in 1955, when there was a light drizzle that turned into a drenching rain by the time the game began.

By late Friday, authorities were dealing with dozens of traffic accidents throughout the area.

In South Los Angeles, a 15-year-old boy was killed when the car in which he was riding was involved in a three-vehicle collision at 59th Street and Broadway, but police did not blame the accident entirely on the rain.

Police arrested Soriano Rodriguez, 41, on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter after he allegedly ran a stop sign. Authorities said the car in which Everado Temores was a passenger was struck by Rodriguez’s vehicle, then slid across the rain-soaked highway, where it was hit by a third vehicle. The youth died at the scene.

In Pico Rivera, a 50-year-old motorist was killed when he struck a parked vehicle near Rosemead Boulevard and Dunlap Crossing Road in what a sheriff’s sergeant said may have been a rain-related accident.

In Northridge, five people, including a mother and baby, were taken to the Northridge Hospital Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries after their car collided with another vehicle.

Authorities said the accident, which occurred in the 8700 block of Corbin Avenue, was rain-related.

Two hours later in Sherman Oaks, another seven people were injured--two critically--in two separate wrecks at about the same time on the transition road between the San Diego and the Ventura freeways, said a CHP spokesman. The storm was a factor in both accidents.

One of the critically injured victims was taken to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center and the other to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, authorities said.

Four teenagers who became stranded 7,000 feet up Mt. Baldy and endured subfreezing temperatures without jackets were lifted to safety Friday afternoon.

The youths, who were clad in jeans and light shirts, all were believed to have hypothermia and one possibly had a twisted ankle after spending the night on the slopes of the 10,064-foot mountain, a San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokesman said.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department assigned swift-water rescue teams to three county fire stations near the Los Angeles River, a supervising dispatcher said.

Friday’s storm dumped up to an inch of rain across the area.

Among the measurements: Civic Center, 0.27 of an inch; Los Angeles International Airport, 1.05; Long Beach, 0.45; Redondo Beach, 0.90; Northridge, 0.39; Pasadena, 0.36; and San Gabriel, 0.40.