Bruising Storms Cause Evacuations, 1 Death

Two storm systems bashed California with dark fury Tuesday, forcing thousands of residents to flee fast-rising rivers in the north and creating havoc in the Southland as trees toppled, freeways flooded and roofs blew away in the tremendous winds.

Fourteen counties declared local emergencies, the precursor to requesting federal disaster relief. Ventura County was one of them, as officials scrambled to keep up with a storm so fierce that it ripped away 200 feet of the Hueneme Pier and dumped slicks of mud across the Ventura Freeway.

The Northern California storm prompted at least 6,000 evacuations and was blamed for one death, in San Mateo County, where a man suffered fatal injuries when a tree slammed into his house. The publisher of a small newspaper near Stockton was reported missing after apparently being swept away by flood waters in Calaveras County.

Southern California authorities reported no fatalities, but twin 12-year-old boys barely escaped injury when an elm tree crashed through the window of their Hancock Park bedroom in Los Angeles, showering them with glass.

Meanwhile, power outages left thousands of people in the dark at least sporadically throughout the day. About 187,000 customers were affected in the Bay Area, along with at least 114,000 in Southern California.

The Sepulveda Dam came within seven feet of flood levels, and the normally barren Los Angeles River coursed with muddy water--so much that officials declared certain sections of it running at 75% of capacity.

And ferocious winds ripped part of the roof from an eight-unit building at the San Fernando Gardens public housing complex in Pacoima. No one was injured, but several residents felt like they had just lived through a scene from “The Wizard of Oz.”

“The roof just flew off. It was a really loud noise,” said Ramon Medina, 23, who lives in one of the damaged apartments. “It kind of shook the building. It was pretty bad.”

That same wind whipped up waves as high as 15 feet along the coast. A recorded surf report at Malibu lifeguard headquarters described it this way: “Beautiful to watch; no way you can get out there.”

Road Closures Galore

In fact, there was no way to get many places Tuesday in California. There were SigAlerts and road closures galore, including stretches of major freeways. Heavy snow made for rough driving in the Sierra Nevada.

And if clogged roads weren’t frustrating enough (“Traffic on the 80 is backed up all the way to Missouri,” one frazzled traffic reporter blurted during San Francisco’s morning rush hour), public transportation was slowed across large swaths of the state.

Amtrak canceled service from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and Oakland until further notice. Metrolink routed commuters onto buses north of Moorpark to avoid flooded tracks, and will probably do the same today. Union Pacific shut down its operations in Ventura County.

And several flights out of Los Angeles International Airport were delayed--not because the runways were flooded, but because passengers and flight crews couldn’t make it to the terminals, due to impossible gridlock on surrounding streets.

Though airport officials said there were no other problems, a passenger on one flight from Cincinnati reported feeling a “tremendous jolt”--which the pilot described as a lightning strike--as the plane approached LAX.

“When people stopped screaming, the pilot came on and said, ‘You can see we’re still in the air,’ ” recalled Laurel Stavis, who works as a news director for Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

Similar nerve-racking dramas played out across California.

Rescue workers touched down a helicopter on top of a tractor to pluck a stranded farm worker from swollen Castaic Creek in the Santa Clarita Valley. A pregnant woman in labor was picked up with a backhoe--the only vehicle able to maneuver through flood waters to her swamped house in the tiny coastal town of Pescadero, south of San Francisco.

A 9-year-old barely escaped with his life when he was found floating face down in an irrigation canal near the town of Corning in Tehama County.

In the San Fernando Valley community of North Hills, a 13-year-old Granada Hills girl and a 14-year-old girl from Sunland were swept away in Bull Creek after they entered the water beneath Devonshire Street, authorities said.

The 14-year-old was rescued by a firefighter from the center support of a bridge at Lassen Street, about half a mile from where she entered the water. Her companion was rescued about two miles downstream from where she fell in, plucked from the river by a firefighter who was lowered from a helicopter. Both girls, whose identities were not available, were in good condition at local hospitals.

Another rescue effort took place at Stanford University--this one not to save lives, but to retrieve books and documents from the basements of two libraries swamped with several inches of water. About 150 students rushed to the libraries before dawn to form a sort of bucket brigade to salvage the books. And as their reward, university officials canceled classes Tuesday, not wanting to penalize the students for having missed out on sleep to save their texts.

The statewide drenching was not the biggest--or the worst--to hit California. Last year’s winter whopper, in January, caused far more devastation. And the Southland suffered through an equally intense storm earlier this season, a December soaking that dumped up to 15 inches of rain in the foothills, said meteorologist Wes Etheredge of WeatherData Inc.

Still, although they did not set any records, Tuesday’s storms impressed state officials because of their breadth, affecting residents from the Oregon line to the Mexican border. High water was reported in every major California river.

“On the satellite view, it’s sitting out there covering the state like a big footprint,” said Jeff Cohen of the State Flood Center, who took to calling the synchronized downpour “Bigfoot.”

Skies should clear up in the Southland by this morning, and mostly clear weather should hold through the weekend except for some scattered showers Friday and Saturday, Etheredge said.

Northern California, however, is due to get slammed with yet another storm. Showers there are expected to resume late this afternoon, and should continue through the weekend--not as intensely as Tuesday’s storm, but soggy nonetheless, Etheredge predicted.

As Cohen put it: “We won’t have blue skies and birds tweeting.”

Since the ground is already saturated, the additional rain will only put more pressure on already swollen rivers and on reservoirs getting close to flood levels, state officials said. So far, levees in most areas have held firm, thanks in part to strengthening measures taken after the 1997 storms. But the Russian, Napa and Pajaro rivers in Northern California crested well above flood levels.

In Marin County, a two-story house slid down a muddy hill. In soggy Sonoma County, officials said, 153 schools were closed Tuesday and 5,200 households--mostly in Guerneville along the Russian River--were without power. Although the rain abated by afternoon, the river was expected to crest at 38 to 41 feet, significantly above the flood stage of 32 feet.

Southern California, meanwhile, had problems of its own, swept in on a mighty storm system that announced its arrival Tuesday morning with spectacular lightning, booming thunder and winds that gusted so strongly they tore up scores of trees.

Overall, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties bore the worst of it, though Los Angeles’ Mid-Wilshire district was flooded so badly that plumber Joe Torres had to abandon his effort to rescue a customer with a broken sump pump. Torres’ truck stalled on 3rd Street, which looked more like a river than a city road by midmorning.

“I’m going to need a boat to get home if this doesn’t let up soon,” he griped.

Farther north, at least 30 homes were flooded in the Ojai Valley, Ventura and Port Hueneme. U.S. 101 was temporarily closed as water lapped over the lanes and mud slid across the concrete.

And in a creek-side apartment complex in Port Hueneme, Yolanda Anguiano woke up because her feet were cold--only to find rainwater and toilet overflow gushing through her bedroom, tossing about her clothes, makeup and groceries.

“It’s not like it is on TV when everyone comes to your rescue,” she said after wading through hip-deep water to flag down emergency help.

“The sun might come out tomorrow, but it will never get back to the way it was,” she said, near tears in the lobby of an American Red Cross shelter set up at Hueneme High School. “It will not go back to normal.”

Residents throughout the state who suffered similar damage began calling in insurance claims before the rain even let up.

By Tuesday afternoon, State Farm had received 5,000 claims from Southern Californians. And Farmers Insurance reported receiving 200 calls an hour, although two of its claims centers were closed due to flooding, said Candysse Miller, regional director of the Western Insurance Information Service trade association.

Many of the claims related to wind damage, she said.

That destruction was very much in evidence in Santa Barbara, where up to 200 trees crashed onto city streets, pitched over by gusts that reportedly hit 78 mph. Six of the toppled trees landed on houses and 20 smashed into cars, said George Gerth, the city’s transportation manager.

Metrolink Train Trapped

Falling trees also trapped a Metrolink commuter train en route to Los Angeles from Ventura County. After trees fell in front of and behind the train, hemming it in near Moorpark, passengers had to be transferred to a bus and then another train. “Our conductors don’t carry their power saws with them,” quipped a Metrolink official.

That train’s problems may well have been unique, but elsewhere, communities throughout the state were experiencing the same type of scenes: underground garages so swamped that only the hoods of cars peeped out from the murky waters. Tired-eyed refugees crowding into shelters. Feisty daredevils who refused to be evacuated. And, naturally, traffic jams. Motorists encountered flooded roads, downed trees, mudslides and random debris.

In Palo Alto, the Fire Department evacuated 200 people from dozens of homes and cars. One man, trapped while attempting to drive through an underpass-turned-river, swam through six feet of standing water to a pump station roof, from which rescuers retrieved him.

“We had to launch our boat that we normally use for rescues in San Francisco Bay down normal residential streets to rescue people,” Battalion Chief Philip Constantino said.

Despite isolated scenes of chaos, the scene Tuesday was nothing like the deluge that smashed levees in Northern California and the Central Valley in January 1997, flooding 23,000 homes and 2,000 businesses, causing $2 billion in property losses and leaving eight people dead.

For all the devastation the storm caused, it also gave some people pleasure. Coffee in hand, Virginia and Dan Howard stood in the rain at the Venice Pier in Los Angeles to watch the ocean surge in tall, silvery waves. “This is the part of living at the beach that’s awesome,” Virginia Howard said.

Over on skid row, meanwhile, 59-year-old Henry Clark had an easy time peddling striped $6 umbrellas. “There’s no sales pitch necessary on a rainy day,” Clark said. “You just let the umbrellas be seen.”

* SHRUGGING IT OFF: Oft-flooded Guerneville unfazed by latest battering. A3

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers John L. Mitchell, Richard Simon, Wendy Miller, Efrain Hernandez Jr., Maria L. La Ganga, Mark Arax, Max Vanzi, Duke Helfand, Valerie Burgher, Matt Lait, Tracy Johnson, Alan Abrahamson, Vanessa Hua, Jeff Leeds, Tony Perry, Roberto J. Manzano, Dade Hayes, Daryl Kelley, Eric Rimbert, Martha Willman, Tom Gorman, Tim Rutten, Greg Miller, Yung Kim, Brett Johnson, Susan Abrams and Ken Reich and correspondents Julia Scheeres, Troy Heie, Coll Metcalfe, Brenda Loree, Claire Vitucci and Brenna Wardell.