Storm Batters Orange County

The season’s worst storm to date hampered the search Saturday for a lost hiker in Angeles National Forest and wreaked havoc in Orange County, where hundreds of people were flooded out of mobile home parks along the coast.

Portions of several Southland counties were pelted with more than 5 inches of rain before the two-day storm moved east toward Arizona late Saturday.

Meanwhile, rescue teams continued into the night their search for a 40-year-old woman who became separated from friends Friday evening on a forest trail near Gorman when the group got caught in heavy rain and snow.

In hard-hit Orange County, there were no reported injuries, but roofs collapsed, drivers were swept into a raging wash and four homes were evacuated because of a mudslide in Silverado Canyon. At least 400 people were also forced to leave three mobile home parks in Huntington Beach, where heavy rain flooded the streets and collapsed ceilings. Firefighters, who went door to door in search of those trapped inside the trailers, used rubber rafts to float people to safety.

When it was over, as much as 7 inches of rain had fallen on some areas of Orange County--more than during any other 24-hour period since records have been kept.

Elsewhere in the region, public safety agencies reported minor damage despite an overnight torrent that subsided into sporadic showers by Saturday evening.

In Los Angeles County, the storm triggered scattered rockslides, road closings, power failures and traffic accidents, most of minor consequence. Malibu, particularly vulnerable to landslides and high surf along Pacific Coast Highway, emerged virtually unscathed.

The storm did not cause “the kind of damage that the eighth or ninth storm down the road will cause,” said Debby Steffen, the southern regional administrator of the state Office of Emergency Services. “I think we are more ready than we ever have been, hoping for the best and planning for the worst.”

Meteorologists described the two-day storm as a strong one, but not nearly as powerful as the El Nino-driven weather that devastated the Southern California coast in 1982-83.

Those storms lasted longer and coincided with unusually high tides and enormous surf, which were missing Friday when the front hit.

A new northern Pacific storm is expected to move in this afternoon, but it will result in substantially less rain than Saturday’s storm, according to the National Weather Service.

“We have definitely seen the worst of it,” said Wes Etheredge, a meteorologist for WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “The storm systems are winding down.”

Hardest hit was Orange County, where besides the flooding that prompted the evacuations, 5 feet of water pooled so quickly in some low-lying neighborhoods that residents had to scramble onto their roofs. Some automobiles were submerged to their hoods.

“We expected it to be bad, but we didn’t have a clue as to how fast the water would rise,” said Pat Brown, manager of the Del Mar Mobile Home Park. “If more rain comes, we’ll have the same things happen again.”

In Ventura County, mountain areas reported more than 10 inches of rain. Ojai received 4.36 inches, while 3.4 inches fell in Oxnard, along the coast.

Reported rainfall in Los Angeles County ranged from 1.44 inches at the Los Angeles Civic Center to 5.9 inches in Newhall. Slightly more than 2 inches fell at Los Angeles International Airport.

The storm also brought snow and ice to the mountains north and east of Los Angeles. Interstate 5 was closed in the Tejon Pass area for three hours because of slippery pavement at 4,100-feet elevation.

Light snow contributed to a second closure of Interstate 5 near Gorman early Saturday. Four to five trailer trucks were involved in a collision that resulted in a 40-minute shutdown of both directions of the highway.

The showers and thunderstorms continued east across the interior of Southern California. In Riverside County, flooding damaged 18 homes, some heavily, in El Cerrito near Corona, and four homes in Wildomar near Lake Elsinore. Some residents had to go to a Red Cross shelter, said fire Capt. Pixie Evans.

Amtrak service from Los Angeles to San Diego was canceled because of flooding, and other trains going through Los Angeles were delayed up to 90 minutes.

*

In the Angeles National Forest east of Gorman, more than 100 sheriff’s deputies and search and rescue team members combed the rough terrain Saturday in search of Karen Tellez, 40, the hiker who apparently became disoriented by heavy rain and snow Friday night.

Tellez was hiking with three friends on the Pacific Crest Trail near the community of Three Points when they lost contact with her. Family members were hopeful that Tellez, an avid hiker, would be found alive.

“She knows what she’s doing. She hikes all the time,” said her daughter, Ciara Nations, 20. “We’re just waiting for a phone call. That’s all.”

In urban areas, government officials said that the rainfall would have caused far more damage had it not been for extensive precautions, from bulldozing and sandbagging along the coast to requests that Orange County residents postpone doing their weekend laundry.

“We were prepared,” said Jean Granucci of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works. “The flood control system is doing its job.”

In anticipation of the storm season, the department undertook a comprehensive effort to clean up the county’s vast flood control system, which includes 70,000 catch basins and 2,900 miles of open channels and underground storm drains.

This year, Granucci said, more citizens--apparently worried about the threat of El Nino--took advantage of the department’s disaster preparedness programs that provide sandbags and tips for protecting property.

*

Though the latest storm is related to the El Nino condition, WeatherData meteorologists say it could have been part of the normal weather pattern for late fall.

At the same time, El Nino definitely added to the rainfall by feeding tropical moisture into the storm, according to WeatherData.

“The enhanced moisture looks like an El Nino pattern,” Etheredge said, “but we don’t know if the storm would have occurred anyway.”

El Nino is a periodic weather condition in the tropical Pacific triggered by weakening trade winds from the west. This causes a mass of warm water normally located off Australia to move east to western South America.

Meteorologists have warned of El Nino for months, and some experts say it could be blamed for fueling Pacific hurricanes such as Pauline and Nora. This year’s strong El Nino condition already has brought floods and drought to several continents.

In the United States, the biggest El Nino effects usually don’t occur until mid-December and early January, when more severe storms are expected to hit the nation’s southern states from California to Florida.

Times staff writers Fred Alvarez, Geoff Boucher, T. Christian Miller and special correspondent Tom Becker contributed to this story.