Powerful Storm Races Toward the Southland

What could be the strongest in a continuing series of potent, wind-lashed storms hurtled across the Pacific toward soggy Southern California on Tuesday night as workers struggled to clean up the mess left by the earlier downpours.

“This system is racing across the ocean, and it’s going to dive right down into Los Angeles,” said meteorologist Jeff House. “When it arrives on Thursday, things could get kind of interesting.”

House, who works for WeatherData Inc., a company that provides forecasts for The Times, said the oncoming storm could drop as much as 2 inches of rain at the Civic Center, with up to 5 inches in some foothill communities.

“The rain looks like it’ll be a little steadier, and last a little longer, than the earlier ones,” he said. “It’ll probably rain Thursday afternoon and Thursday night, and maybe into Friday.”

That was not the sort of forecast they had been hoping for in Ventura County, where a rain-soaked hillside collapsed Tuesday morning, snapping a large natural gas pipeline and hurling a plume of orange flame skyward that could be seen from Oxnard to Santa Barbara.

It was also a grim prediction for Orange County, where mudslides cut several hillside roads and sent boulders crashing down beside a landmark restaurant in Laguna Canyon.

And Thursday’s storm--the third in a series that began last week--probably won’t be the end of it, House said.

“The pattern isn’t over yet,” he said. “It looks now like there will be another storm coming in sometime Saturday. We don’t know yet how strong that one will be.”

The 16-inch gas pipeline that ruptured two miles northwest of Ventura about 6 a.m. Tuesday was the second to rupture because of landslides in Ventura County in four days. The escaping gas from Tuesday’s break ignited almost immediately, sending up a column of flame as tall as a 30-story building.

“It was like a giant pilot light on top of a hill on a very clear night,” said Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Joe Luna. “We had calls from Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. They wanted to know what the heck we had going on down here in Ventura County.”

On Saturday, an 18-inch line ruptured after a soggy ridge gave way in the hills near Ventura, and that time, too, there was an ensuing fire.

In both cases, automatic safety valves that detect drastic changes in pressure cut off the natural gas flow, starving the fires of fuel. In both cases, there were no injuries.

Tuesday’s spectacular blaze burned out shortly before 7 a.m., and the small flare-ups around it were extinguished shortly afterward, Luna said.

Crews from Southern California Gas Co. spent the day shoring up earth beneath the mudslide to prevent further ruptures while county engineers checked other hillsides by helicopter for unstable ground that might also give way.

“Right now everything looks all right, and hopefully it will stay that way,” Luna said. “But with all the rain and with the ground being so wet already, it really wouldn’t take too much for the ground to give way.”

State regulators who oversee the thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines that snake across the state said breaks are extremely rare.

Three miles north of the city of Ventura, officials finished draining a lake of water, mud and debris created after another landslide last week blocked a runoff channel in Hell Canyon.

Crews from the city’s Department of Public Works and from Texaco, which leases a portion of the canyon and runs pipelines through the area, brought in pumps to lower the level of the lake that threatened to overflow and send a murky torrent cascading through midtown neighborhoods.

“Anything that I could say right now would not do the work they did justice,” Ventura Mayor Jim Friedman said Tuesday. “Without question they’ve diverted a disaster.”

“We got through this pretty much unscathed,” said Lt. Carl Handy of the Ventura Police Department. “But it was close, really close.”

With a two-day window before the next storm rolls in off the Pacific, crews will drain more water so the anticipated rainfall doesn’t create another dangerous backup.

Runoff from other rain-swollen streams carpeted a number of Vetura streets with mud and slime.

Carla Bonney arrived at work early Tuesday to find a three-inch-thick layer of brown sludge covering the floors of her photo and art framing shop.

With a 2-foot stack of artwork ruined, Bonney faulted the city for failing to warn her of the danger of flowing mud.

“It’s going to cost me all the money I’m going to make this week,” she said. “I have eight kids. I can’t afford to have something like this occur.”

The forecasts of more rain worried crews mopping up after a weekend oil spill caused by yet another Ventura County landslide. The concern was that additional precipitation might wash some of the about 8,400 gallons of crude oil down to the ocean from the canyon into which it spilled. A dam was erected at the beachfront mouth of the canyon.

In Orange County on Tuesday, employees at the Tivoli Terrace restaurant in Laguna Canyon hurriedly carried out antiques and Miss Daisy, the resident cat, after a waterlogged hillside above the place gave way about 8 a.m.

Fire crews and geologists were evaluating the situation at the site of the famed Laguna Beach Festival of Arts. They said about 2 1/2 acres of unstable hillside are involved and it “could be moving for a couple of days.”

Electricity and gas lines to the restaurant were shut off. The restaurant, which received moderate damage to its outside grounds, will remain closed until an assessment of the slippage can be made.

Last weekend’s rainfall undermined sections of Santiago Canyon Road, a major artery linking canyon communities to the rest of Orange County. The road was closed for repairs and is expected to reopen Thursday.

Nearly all hiking trails in Orange County’s park system are either muddy, soaked or extensively damaged by erosion that has left dangerous drop-offs in some places, park officials said.

In all, about 40% of the county’s 200 miles of hiking trails are damaged, said Tim Miller, supervisor of county parks.

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Times staff writers Eric Malnic, Hilary E. MacGregor and Coll Metcalfe and correspondent Richard Warchol contributed to this story.