New Storms Lash Southland, With More Rain on Way

A much-dreaded series of winter storms continued to slam the Southland on Friday as fast but furious blasts of rain swamped freeways, ripped open a giant sinkhole in Pacific Palisades, washed millions of gallons of raw sewage onto beaches and tossed waves against hundreds of homes in Ventura County.

In Los Angeles, mud crashed into the first floor of an apartment building in the Westlake area after the storm toppled a 15-foot retaining wall. Inspectors declared the entire building unsafe and evacuated more than 100 residents.

“The mud just came tumbling down,” said Red Cross worker Brad Jerzykowski, who was helping with the relief efforts.

Other disasters, large and small, hit every corner of the Southland:

Untreated sewage coursed down streets in Marina del Ray. In rural areas, fields of celery, broccoli and cauliflower morphed into ugly brown lakes. Power flickered--and fizzled--in tens of thousands of homes.

Traffic stalled for miles on key arteries as water swept across Pacific Coast Highway and the Ventura, Harbor and Santa Ana freeways. And the freeways that remained open were not much better: Five separate accidents involved a total of more than 50 cars on the Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley during the evening rush hour, creating a jam that one California Highway Patrol officer described simply as “horrendous.”

Warning of “conditions of extreme peril,” Gov. Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency in 12 more counties, including Santa Barbara. All told, emergency conditions have been declared in 22 counties during this week’s storms, which have damaged or destroyed 1,111 residences and 150 other buildings, state officials said.

State officials also blame the fierce weather for at least four deaths this week.

A fifth possible storm-related death occurred Friday night when a woman suspected of stealing a car apparently tried to elude police by jumping into the Los Angeles River from an overpass near Paramount, authorities said. A body thought to be that of the unidentified woman was later pulled from the river seven miles downstream. A male companion who also tried to escape in the river was rescued before the raging current could carry him away and was in police custody.

Elsewhere, there were several close calls: In San Bernardino County, a 26-year-old man who jumped into a flood control channel to save his dog was rescued by firefighters--but only after the roiling water swept him seven miles downstream. The rescue team also had to save a fellow firefighter who landed in the channel while trying to help the dog owner stay afloat.

Rescue crews also sped to action in Ventura County when a car slid off a freeway, careened down a rain-slicked slope and tipped over the edge of the Arroyo Simi flood control channel, anchored only by its back wheels, which snagged on the channel’s edge. Highway Patrol officers and sheriff’s deputies pulled both the car and the uninjured driver to safety.

And in Camarillo, rescue workers took to rubber boats for a door-to-door search to make sure no one was trapped inside more than 40 deluged homes. By midafternoon, some Camarillo neighborhoods were in four feet of water.

“I have never seen it rain as hard and as fast and in so short a time,” said Camarillo City Manager Bill Little, whose morning meeting was interrupted when water began seeping under the City Hall door. “We called for sandbags, but they didn’t get here in time.”

Although skies in most regions had cleared by late afternoon, the worst is not necessarily over.

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Meteorologists predict more rain in Southern California on Sunday, including intense bursts similar to those that bedeviled the region Friday. Fresh snows in the mountains near Los Angeles prompted the National Forest Service to issue avalanche warnings for two hillsides near Mt. Baldy. The slopes, near Manker Flats about three miles north of Mt. Baldy, are popular with sledders.

The weekend looks even worse in Northern California, which came through Friday’s wet weather relatively unscathed but which is due for a pounding when the next storm system hits land.

And soggy Californians can’t even blame El Nino: This was “a typical winter storm, the kind that we have almost every year,” said meteorologist John Sherwin of WeatherData Inc. “And there are two more on the way.”

Before they could focus on the next round of storms, however, Southland residents had to clean up the mess left by Friday’s deluge.

Health officials shut down beaches in Pacific Palisades and Marina del Rey as sewage poured out of manholes unable to handle the torrents of rain.

A sinkhole the size of a football field developed along Pacific Palisades Drive; authorities said the asphalt crumbled because the overtaxed storm drain system simply couldn’t handle so much rain in such a short time, and water backed up in the street. The rush of water was so strong that it swept more than a dozen parked cars half a mile down the street.

The pavement also buckled along a main road in Thousand Oaks, ripping open a 20-foot sinkhole near Thousand Oaks High School.

In all, Caltrans estimated that the storms have required more than $2.3 million in road repairs this week in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties.

And there are other frantic repair jobs going on around the state.

One of the Southland’s most urgent was in Thousand Oaks, where crews struggled to repair a burst pipe at a waste water treatment plant. At 5 a.m. Friday, they thought they had it fixed--but 90 minutes later, rain washed it out again, spilling more raw sewage into the Arroyo Canal and ultimately into the ocean.

With prospects for repair uncertain, officials said that human waste could continue to gush toward the ocean at the rate of 6 million gallons a day through the middle of next week.

“It’s basically time to pray and ask God to let up a bit,” City Councilwoman Judy Lazar said after hearing the grim prognosis.

Road crews struggling to rebuild a washed-out bridge on California 118 between Somis and Moorpark suffered a similar setback Friday. They had tried to shore up the 90-year-old bridge with stone pilings, but swift, rain-fed currents washed away their work. Now, Caltrans crews predict that they will have to move the bridge south to rebuild it.

Perhaps the most dramatic scenes of the day played out in Camarillo, a bedroom community checkered with farmland at the foot of the Conejo Grade.

There, at least three inches of water filled most of the Civic Center. An elderly couple had to be rescued by boat from their trailer park. And in a condominium complex half a mile from City Hall, 38-year-old Tom Farrell woke up to an unusual noise: the crash of waves against his building.

“It just happened real fast,” Farrell said. “I looked out my window and saw a wall of water coming down my back drive.”

Mud and muck was everywhere in Southern California

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A shopping mall in Goleta, in Santa Barbara County, was inundated when a nearby creek overflowed. More than 50 farm workers had to be evacuated from their homes in the same town when a nearby lake topped its dam.

Two cars were all but buried in mud in Newport Beach, across the street from the Balboa Yacht Club. Water swept into classrooms in Ventura and shops in the town of Santa Paula.

Rainfall totals for the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. Friday included 3 inches at Thousand Oaks, 2.27 inches at Westwood, 2.20 at Pasadena, 2.01 at Chatsworth, 1.96 at Van Nuys, 1.73 at Montebello, 1.71 at the Los Angeles Civic Center and 1.14 in Redondo Beach.

The storm cut electric power to more than 108,000 customers from Stockton to Laguna Beach, keeping repair crews from three power companies busy.

The outages lasted anywhere from 30 seconds to several hours--with thousands still left without electricity late Friday, said officials from PG & E, Southern California Edison and DWP.

As rain swamped low-lying fields on the Oxnard Plain, the Ventura County agricultural commissioner pegged the local damage toll at about $5.5 million.

Around the state, vegetable and strawberry crops suffered damage totaling about $15 million, according to the California Farm Bureau.

While those figures sound alarming--and represent serious losses to some growers--they are small change compared with the toll from last year’s flooding, estimated at $297 million statewide.

This time, strawberries on the Oxnard Plain suffered the most damage, as the rain pelted them mercilessly over the past few days. Even then, though, the crops were not a total wash: Growers continued to harvest bruised berries to sell at reduced prices to processors for use in jams and juices.

“Farmers are doing the best they can do get through this with the prospect of more storms ahead,” state Farm Bureau spokesman Bob Krauter said. “Farmers are always faced with risks from Mother Nature.”

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While Southern California slogged grimly through the mud Friday, people farther north were enjoying a brief respite. Their storm system proved much weaker than predicted, giving swollen rivers a chance to settle down.

Still, a few trouble spots--and the forecast of heavy rains ahead--conspired to keep emergency workers on edge. “As far as I can tell,” said Jaime Arteaga, a spokesman for the Office of Emergency Services, “no one’s getting a day off.”

About 1,600 people remained in shelters in Northern California on Friday night, most of them in Watsonville, where the Pajaro River spilled its banks and threatened to lap toward homes. As of late Friday, about 3,500 people had been evacuated from their homes.

And more evacuations seemed likely.

In Daly City, for example, just south of San Francisco, seven homes clung precariously to the rain-soaked landfill they were built on in the 1960s.

Earlier this week, wind and rain ate away 30 feet of the cliff, threatening the homes above Avalon Canyon. “The condition of the canyon is extremely unstable and extremely unsafe,” Assistant City Manager Pat Martel said. “If these rains continue, it is anyone’s guess what is going to happen.”

A similar problem was developing in Oakland, where public works officials kept a wary eye on saturated hillsides. One house had to be demolished as it started to slide into a neighbor lower on a slope.

In San Francisco, rain washed over the Embarcadero, nearly a dozen trees toppled in Golden Gate park and 50 flights were canceled at San Francisco International Airport. Half the planes that did take off left late, said spokesman Ron Wilson. Delays ranged from 15 minutes to two hours, with similar delays expected over the weekend.

Further south in Big Sur, the Air Force National Guard continued to ferry in medicine and pluck out stranded tourists and residents for a third day Friday. Caltrans officials said it would be days, if not weeks, before washed out roads into the area would be repaired.

Predicting the worst elsewhere, the Army Corps of Engineers sent crews to shore up eroding riverbanks or leaking levees at three spots in the Sacramento area. “Lucky for us the winds died down, or we would have topped some levees,” said Carl Dombek, an emergency worker in San Joaquin County.

In addition, federal crews rushed to build a mile-long berm of soil, sandbags and plastic sheeting around the tiny town of Los Banos, near Monterey.

The creek that runs past the town is expected to overflow this weekend, and while the water won’t rush out with explosive force, it could swamp thousands of homes and businesses--unless the berm is completed in time to divert it, officials said.

As crews built up the berm--which they predicted they would finish in plenty of time--some Los Banos residents headed out to snap photos, while others scrambled to prepare evacuation kits.

“You’re seeing every type of human reaction,” said Keith Groninga, executive director of the Los Banos Chamber of Commerce. “Some people are panic stricken, ready to pack the boats and call up Noah. But in the main, people are handling it well.”

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People were also handling it well in Guerneville, where the Russian River turned out to be much tamer than predicted. It is expected to crest about four feet above flood stage, but that’s nothing to residents who were expecting their town to be all but underwater by this morning.

But there were problems.

Paul and Alyona Shkurkin, for instance, got trapped downtown Friday afternoon when they went out for videos and cigarettes, only to find that the rising river had cut off their access home by the time they made their purchases.

Their solution: hang out by the water’s edge and “wait for some kids in a big four-wheel-drive to take us back,” Paul Shkurkin said.

Despite their laid-back attitudes, no one in Guerneville was ready to declare victory over the storms.

“We lucked out--pure luck--this week and this season,” antiques store owner Wayne Skala said. “But it’s still raining,” he acknowledged as the drops slid down his yellow slicker. Until it stops, he added, expressing a view that Californians everywhere are beginning to agree with, “all bets are off.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Maria L. La Ganga, Mary Curtius, Miguel Bustillo, Kate Folmar, Eric Malnic, Carl Ingram, Tom Gorman, Mark Arax, Wendy Miller, Ralph Frammolino, Bettina Boxall, Scott Hadly, Chris Chi, Tracy Wilson, Ken Ellingwood and Douglas P. Shuit and correspondents Claire Vitucci, Michael Krikorian, Julia Scheeres, Nick Green, Coll Metcalfe, Dawn Hobbs and Deborah Belgum.

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Rainfall Totals

To date since July 1, in inches.

Last season: 12.32

This year: 12.72

Season norm: 8.50

Source: National Weather Service

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Winter’s Triple Punch

A series of three Pacific storms--Friday’s, and those expected Sunday and Tuesday--are visible in this satellite image recorded at 3 p.m. Friday. The intensity of the storm is indicated by color, with the strongest shown in green, diminishing through blue and magenta to the weakest, yellow.

Tuesday: The storm expected onshore early next week remains disorganized.

Sunday: The next system expected to dump rain on Southern California, still 1,000 miles off the coast, is in the leaf shape of a developing storm.

Friday: The weather system centered over the Northwest, still exhibiting the classic comma shape of an intense winter storm, had begun moving inland from the West Coast.

Source: National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration / WeatherData Inc.