Powerful Storm Lashes Rain-Soaked California

An intense, El Nino-boosted storm raked California with torrential rains and wind-driven snow Monday, toppling a giant eucalyptus tree that killed two people, and triggering mudslides and floods that blocked roads, cut rail lines and forced the temporary evacuation of 2,000 residents of Santa Paula.

The eucalyptus tree crashed into a sport utility vehicle at a stop sign near the campus of the Claremont Colleges, Los Angeles County fire officials said. The passenger and driver, who were pronounced dead at the scene, had not been identified as of late Monday.

The rain-swollen Ventura River and several creeks overflowed their banks in widespread areas of Ventura County, prompting the evacuations in Santa Paula and the closure of U.S. 101 in both directions. California 150 and California 30 were cut by flooding, leaving Ojai virtually isolated.

Pacific Coast Highway, Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Malibu Canyon Road were blocked by flooding and mudslides, largely cutting off Malibu to the east and north and forcing cancellation of classes at Pepperdine University’s Malibu campus.

Monday’s storm swept ashore from the Pacific before dawn, hammering coastal valleys with rains that flooded residential neighborhoods in Ventura and threatened houses on an unstable hillside in the Hollywood Hills.

The storm was among the strongest--and apparently the last--in a series of rigorous weather systems that have punished the state since Feb. 1.

The rains that fell Monday raised the Civic Center rainfall total for the month to almost 12 inches, with five days still to go.

That’s only about an inch short of the February record of 13.37 inches set in 1884, a few months after the Krakatoa volcano exploded in the Sunda Channel west of Java, hurling a vast cloud of ash into the atmosphere that circled the globe and triggered rainfall records throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

The total in Los Angeles so far this season--which runs from July 1 through June 30--is more than 21 inches, about twice the normal amount for the date. But that’s peanuts compared to the Sonoma County hamlet of Cazadero, where more than 100 inches of rain has fallen.

In Ventura County, steady downpours dropped up to seven inches of rain by midday Monday, with more continuing to fall into the night. Creeks in the Santa Paula area rose rapidly, and the channels and levees containing them threatened to give way.

With red lights flashing and sirens wailing, police fanned out through Santa Paula’s low-lying southeast corner, warning residents to pack up and leave.

“My boyfriend called me out and told me to get out of town,” Sina Arellano, 28, said as she pushed her belongings into a minivan and headed for higher ground.

At nightfall Monday, the waters began to recede and residents were allowed to return to their homes.

A Union Pacific railroad trestle was undermined by the surging flows of the Ventura River and will not be reopened to rail traffic for weeks. Amtrak service between Los Angeles and Seattle has been halted indefinitely by the damaged trestle.

The Ventura River washed over U.S. 101 in Ventura for most of the afternoon, cutting off all vehicular traffic on the only direct route between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.

“Wow, big chunks of the mountain are coming down,” said Sheri Connelly, manager of the Camp Comfort RV park near Ojai, where 72 permanent campers were evacuated in the face of rising waters.

The county’s largest river--the wide and sweeping Santa Clara--was expected to overflow its banks in Oxnard and at McGrath State Beach before dawn.

“It’s very scary, because it could do a lot of damage to a lot of places,” senior county hydrologist Dolores Taylor said as the rains continued to hammer down Monday afternoon.

In Malibu, residents stood by gamely in a steady downpour, watching the rocks tumble down the rain-soaked bluffs and onto Pacific Coast Highway.

“There’s kind of a perverse fascination with it, because it’s my house that’s in the way,” said Howard Schechter, 54.

“I’ve been here since 1975,” he said. “I’ve seen all this many times. When the mountain’s not coming down, then the ocean’s coming up. Then, in the summer, it’s the fires.”

Near Moonshadows restaurant, a 90-ton shelf of rock threatened to crash down on the highway, directly across from a five-unit apartment building that had been condemned for sand erosion a week earlier.

Officials from the California Department of Transportation kept a wary eye on the mound of sandstone and decomposed granite.

“Basically, it’s a waiting game right now,” said Dennis Cutting, a Caltrans supervisor. He said that until the rain stops, “we’re not getting near that.”

Residents trying to get home on Pacific Coast Highway were told the road was impassable.

Beth Spooner, 31, a special education teacher in Santa Monica, was supposed to meet her husband at Las Flores Canyon Road and PCH but was turned away.

“It’s a little over a mile to Las Flores,” she said. “It’s either hike it or not get home. I’m gonna hike.”

A section of La Brea Avenue between Stocker and Coliseum streets was closed Monday evening because of mudslides, but was expected to be opened by this morning.

And in Baldwin Hills, one home was evacuated because the saturated ground around it was unstable.

The full force of the storm quite literally hit home for Dave Frees, an 82-year-old Woodland Hills retiree whose morning routine was disrupted when an 80-foot-plus eucalyptus tree crashed into his second-story bedroom. Frees, who was in the bathroom at the time, said he heard what sounded like a thunderclap.

“I ran out, took a look, and the roof was lying on the bed,” he said. “Glass was lying right there on the bed where my head would have been.”

Frees was not injured.

Bernie Gainey returned Monday afternoon from a trip to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, to find that two of his rental properties on Hillside Avenue in the Hollywood Hills had been ordered evacuated because the slope was giving way.

“It’s in the hands of nature,” he said. “Thank God this happened after the closing ceremonies.”

In the Santa Clarita area, a woman whose car was trapped in rising flood waters in a swollen creek was briefly swept away. But she was able to work her way free before a county Fire Department helicopter reached her, said Fire Department Inspector Ed Loney.

A tow truck driver was swept away in the same area but firefighters reported that he reached safety by himself, Loney said.

In Highland Park, firefighters used a helicopter to pluck a man and his two dogs from an “island” in the suddenly flooded--and momentarily misnamed--Arroyo Seco. The man and dogs were unharmed, Los Angeles fire officials said.

In the Acton area, flooding in a tunnel forced suspension of rail commuter service on the Metrolink line between Los Angeles and the Antelope Valley.

In Orange County, rescue crews airlifted several people and dogs from Holy Jim Canyon in the Cleveland National Forest before the rain arrived.

Capt. Scott Brown of the Orange County Fire Authority said the remote cabin community, near the Riverside County line, had radioed a request for help after rutted dirt roads became impassable.

There were minor mudslides in Laguna Beach, but there were no reports of any serious damage to homes.

In Northern California, near San Francisco, storm-driven waves cresting up to 17 feet gnawed away oceanfront bluffs, leaving several homes in Pacifica dangling precariously over the sea.

“The power of the ocean is just awesome,” said Pacific Fire Marshal Steven Branvold.

In Lake County, where the overflowing waters of Clear Lake have forced the evacuation of at least 500 homes, Jim Brown, a spokesman for the county’s Office of Emergency Services, said the water was continuing to rise, threatening additional homes.

“The water is at its highest level since 1909,” Brown said.

Snow fell throughout the day in the High Sierra, with two feet expected above 7,000 feet in the Lake Tahoe area and three feet forecast for Mammoth Mountain. Chains were mandatory on Interstate 80 over Donner Pass. A snow emergency was declared in Reno, sending thousands of workers home before noon.

Heavy snow was forecast for the Tehachapi, San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains at altitudes above 6,000 feet. Wes Etheredge, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said that as Monday’s storm tracked across the northern Pacific, its tail swung far enough south to sweep up some extra moisture from a flare-up of thunderstorm activity south of Hawaii.

It’s what meteorologists describe as a “classic El Nino scenario,” and Etheredge said the tropical moisture probably added significantly to the rainfall.

He said the storm apparently was powerful enough to alter the weather pattern that has been funneling a seemingly endless series of rainstorms into Southern California during the last 10 days.

The storm probably will usher in a ridge of high pressure that should anchor itself off the California coast, deflecting oncoming storms north into British Columbia, Etheredge said.

“Skies should clear by [this] afternoon,” he said. “It looks like Southern California should be dry, at least for the next three or four days.”

Times staff writers Nick Anderson, Miguel Bustillo, Mary Curtius, Abigail Goldman, Jose Cardenas, Peter Hong, Jeff Leeds, Miles Corwin, Nieson Himmel and David Reyes, correspondent Julia Scheeres and Associated Press contributed to this story.

* WARNING SYSTEM: Topanga Canyon residents put Internet site to the test. B1

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Running Water

The Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies monitor water levels and stream flow in flood control channels and basins. Here is the preliminary flow rate recorded for the Los Angeles River below Sepulveda Dam from 9 p.m. Sunday through 4:01 p.m. Monday.

12,784 cubic feet per second at 4:01 p.m.

Source: Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District: data available on the Internet at https://spl65.spl.usace.army.mil/resreg/

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

February Rains

Total at Civic Center as of 4 p.m. Monday, in inches.

THE RECORD: 13.37 Set in 1884

THIS MONTH: 11.96

Source: National Weather Service