Southland Again Pounded by Storm

Southern California was hit with heavy rains Saturday night that flooded freeways and some homes, while a storm earlier in the day sent five houses in Northern California skidding down a soggy hillside near the Russian River and knocked out power to 87,000 in the Bay Area.

By late Saturday night, a driving wind-whipped downpour forced the closure of several roads including Laguna Canyon Road, Carbon Canyon Road as well as a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach.

“We’re getting call after call after call,” said Huntington Beach Police Lt. Larry Miller.

Authorities also reported scattered street flooding and rain-related accidents across the county as well as mudslides in some canyon areas including Brea. Residents in Seal Beach said some streets were flooded with up to 6 inches of water, while many intersections in Costa Mesa were virtually unpassable.

Southland roadways were a mess late Saturday, as motorists sloshed through pools on several freeways, including up to 8 inches of standing water on portions of the Santa Monica Freeway. On the Golden State Freeway, a California Highway Patrol officer was injured when a vehicle slid out of control and careened into his cruiser.

Streets surrounding the Sepulveda Basin were shut down late Saturday because of flooding. In many areas of the San Fernando Valley, up to 3 feet of water filled streets, and several stranded motorists had to be rescued from their cars, fire officials said.

In Malibu, Malibu Canyon Road was closed after a car was hit by three bowling ball-sized boulders and mud oozed onto the roadway.

In Santa Barbara, officials closed roads because of water and mudslides and evacuated mobile home parks near Highway 101 because of flooding from a nearby creek, but the waters had subsided by late Saturday and people began returning to their homes, authorities said.

The National Weather Service predicted that up to three inches of rain would douse the Los Angeles Basin by this morning, with some hilly regions receiving nearly twice that amount.

But forecasters and emergency officials had some good news for the entire state: Dams and levees were in good shape and showers were expected to be relatively light today, fading into cloudy skies Monday.

“It looks like we’re going to have a needed 24- to 36-hour break,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Smith.

Yet another storm was heading eastward in the Pacific and could arrive Tuesday or Wednesday. ‘We’re still on the storm track,” Smith said.

Laguna Canyon Road had been open only two hours when flooding forced authorities to close it again about 7:30 p.m. Saturday. It had been closed Friday because of a previous storm.

Officials reported no serious problems along the Orange County coast, though residents were bracing for high tides this morning.

In San Clemente, Marine Safety Officer Steve Lashbrook said the 6- to 10-foot waves hitting the beach Saturday morning were no bigger than the ones that battered the coast Friday. But the Saturday waves were more frequent.

He said the most critical time would be when a 6.4-foot high tide arrived at 7 a.m. today. A lifeguard will come on duty at 4:30 a.m. to watch for storm damage and call for help from public-works crews before severe flooding or erosion can take hold.

In Huntington Beach, police were also keeping a watchful eye. “We’re just hanging on for the trailer park,” Miller said, referring to the low-lying Del Mar Mobile Estates, where residents had to evacuate during an El Nino-driven storm in December.

Saturday’s storm dropped about an inch of rain in some parts of Northern California. Nonetheless, the weather wreaked plenty of havoc in areas already saturated from the rain series that began early in the week, closing highways and shutting down part of the Bay Area’s commuter rail system.

Ski resort and highway crews in the Sierra stepped up avalanche control efforts as the storm dumped two more feet of snow in the Lake Tahoe area, capping what authorities said was the snowiest week of the season.

In Rio Nido, about five miles east of the Russian River in Sonoma County, five homes slid from hillsides early Saturday. No one was injured, but authorities evacuated residents of about 300 other homes as a precaution.

Meteorologists clocked wind gusts at up to 125 mph atop the East Bay Area’s Mt. Diablo. And flooding again closed major roadways, including U.S. 101 at the Marin-Sonoma County line.

But officials said Northern California’s major rivers were expected to stay within their banks over the next few days, and the respite from heavy rains was giving workers time to shore up levees.

In Camarillo in Ventura County, workers were cleaning and drying out City Hall, which suffered more than $1 million in flood damage.

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Times staff writer Patrick Kerkstra and correspondents Lisa Fernandez and Robert Gammon and Times wire services also contributed to this story.