Flood Kills 2 Teens as Storm Socks Southland

Five students from San Gabriel High School were swept away by flood waters--with two of them confirmed dead and one still missing--as a powerful winter storm unleashed torrential downpours Wednesday on Southern California.

The teenagers, who had ventured into Alhambra Wash beside the school shortly before morning classes began, were carried away by a surge in the fast-moving runoff.

Rescuers--alerted by a passerby who saw the students cascading helplessly down the concrete-lined flood channel--pulled a 14-year-old girl from the Rio Hondo, more than three miles downstream from the school. A 15-year-old boy managed to clamber out on his own.

When the flood waters receded a few hours later, the bodies of two of their companions were recovered amid the flood debris along the river. A search for the fifth student was called off for the night late Wednesday, but scheduled to resume this morning with sheriff’s divers joining the effort.

In other parts of the county, brief but intense cloudbursts and gale-force winds uprooted palm trees, downed power lines and collapsed ceilings in an apartment house Wednesday morning. Snow piled up in the Tehachapi, San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains and hail carpeted lawns in Altadena. Lightning crackled over the foothills ringing the Los Angeles Basin.

Intersections flooded as drivers dodged collisions on thoroughfares already clogged with heavy pre-Thanksgiving holiday traffic. Three people clambered atop the roofs of their vehicles after they stalled in 4 feet of water beneath a railroad overpass on Soto Street in East Los Angeles.

In Chatsworth, construction workers at the Pacific Theater megaplex site said the exposed steel frame of the building was hit by four bolts of lightning.

“It scared the living [daylights] out of me,” said Tony Croce, 29, a carpenter. “It got my attention real quick and I headed south big-time.

“I know it sounds crazy, but it was actually a very pretty light,” said Croce, describing a blue-orange-green halo of electricity arcing toward a nearby tractor.

Police reported scores of collisions on the rain-slicked freeways lacing the Los Angeles Basin.

Most were fender-benders, but a multi-vehicle accident on the Hollywood Freeway in North Hollywood injured five people, one of them seriously. A tow truck driver was hospitalized with moderate injuries after he was hit by a car while assisting a stranded motorist on the northbound lanes of a transition road between the Glendale Freeway and the Ventura Freeway.

More than 3,000 households were left without power in Woodland Hills, Sun Valley, Winnetka, Panorama City and Arleta, according to the DWP. In the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, residents reported downed power poles and flooded basements, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

Palm trees near the Malibu Civic Center were blown over by fierce winds, and residents braced for possible mudslides after a downpour sent small rocks tumbling down canyon slopes.

Officials in San Gabriel said the five teenagers from that city’s high school had been splashing in a puddle on the bottom of the wash behind their school about 9 a.m. when, without warning, a wall of runoff water swept down the channel and engulfed them.

Two customers at a doughnut shop about a mile and a half downstream looked up to see the teenagers hurtling down the flooded channel.

Three of the students were locked in a tight embrace. A fourth--a small girl--struggled alone in the roiling, mud-brown water. The fifth was nowhere to be seen.

“I saw heads popping up and down,” said Rosemead resident Paul Sinquimani, 27, who called 911.

County swift-water rescue teams that sped downstream to the Rio Hondo pulled a 14-year-old girl from a tree where she clung, a few yards below where the wash joins the river. A 15-year-old boy pulled himself from the river before the rescuers arrived.

“They were just so happy to be out of the water,” said county Firefighter William Borthwick, who helped in the rescue. Both teenagers were taken to County-USC Medical Center, where they were treated for minor injuries.

As several hours passed with no sign of the other three, officials said there was little hope that they had survived. The current was moving so fast--30 mph--that the students had little chance to escape on their own, and hypothermia sets in after about an hour in the 50-degree water.

“You can’t fight these waters,” said county fire Inspector Henry Rodriguez. “You can be an Olympic swimmer and I will guarantee you will lose.”

By noon, the waters receded and firefighters combing the river discovered the body of a 14-year-old girl tangled in the lower branches of the same tree in which the rescued girl had been found. A few hours later, the body of another 14-year-old girl was found nearby. Rescuers continued to search for a 17-year-old boy.

Officials said the 17-year-old was the brother of one of the dead girls. None of the teenagers was identified.

A tall fence separates the school grounds from the wash, but officials found a rope ladder leading down to the wash that students had strung some time ago.

At Los Angeles International Airport, weather-related delays backed up some flights for hours. Passenger traffic was heavy, with an estimated 300,000 people passing through LAX, up 50% from the 200,000 on a normal day, said airport spokesman Thomas Winfrey. Lines at most ticket counters and gates moved steadily, however, some even briskly.

Even with the heavy rain, the chore of schlepping to the airport--on what is traditionally the busiest travel day of the year--proved to be something of a pleasant surprise, travelers said.

Actress Sally Struthers, who zipped to the airport from Brentwood with beau Reggie Sully, summed up her day while waiting for a flight to Portland, Ore.:

“I thought I was going to have bad trouble because of the news. . . . It’s a nonevent. I love nonevents.”

At Burbank Airport, where passenger loads typically hover around 12,000 people each day, airport officials anticipate up to 17,000 additional people a day over the holiday weekend. “But there have been no congestion problems,” said Angela Cranon, airport spokeswoman.

Wednesday’s storm hit Southern California at dawn, as expected, with sporadic, often heavy precipitation throughout the day. By nightfall, 0.66 of an inch of rain had fallen at the Los Angeles Civic Center, with about twice that much in some of the surrounding foothill communities.

Chatsworth broke a rainfall record for the day with .86 inches falling between sunrise and 4 p.m., weather experts said. The previous record was .38 inches in 1981.

John Sherwin, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said the northern Pacific storm--which had nothing to do with the much-publicized El Nino meteorological phenomenon--should be clear of the Southland this morning, although there could be a few lingering showers.

Tonight will be one of the coldest of the year, he said, with temperatures dipping into the upper 30s at the coldest locations in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

Sherwin said Friday and Saturday will be mostly sunny and a little warmer, but another cool storm from the northern Pacific could reach here by Sunday night.

“It looks like we might do it all over again,” he said.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Alan Abrahamson, Matea Gold, Solomon Moore and Eric Rimbert, and correspondents Dade Hayes, Jon Steinman and Claire Vitucci.