O.C. Hills Tumble in Latest Downpour

Havoc visited canyon and hillside communities Monday night as water from the powerful storm washed away bridges, forced evacuations and threatened to send saturated hillsides tumbling.

Residents of Canyon Acres, a Laguna Beach enclave mostly destroyed by the firestorm of 1993 and rebuilt, again faced nature’s wrath, as fire strike teams raced to the scene in anticipation of “pretty good slide” activity, according to Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Scott Brown. One person was believed to be buried in a home that had partially collapsed under a slide. It was not immediately known if that person was killed.

Roads in Modjeska, Silverado and Trabuco canyons were engulfed by bulging creeks and sliding slopes after nightfall, temporarily trapping some residents and even the emergency crews trying to keep the roadways clear. All but one bridge in Silverado Canyon reportedly had washed away, and the remaining bridge was covered by water.

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The storm, one of the most potent of this El Nino-fed rainy season, also forced the evacuation earlier Monday of residents in Holy Jim Canyon, a remote cabin community in the Cleveland National Forest near the Riverside County line. A Huey-model helicopter airlifted several inhabitants from the canyon to Rancho Santa Margarita a day after authorities received a radio call for help.

The storm was expected to pass overnight, but not before dumping 3 inches of rain on low-lying areas and double that in the foothills and mountains.

Today, rain-weary Orange County should dry out under partly cloudy skies, in the first of what may be three storm-free days.

“It’s a pretty strong storm,” said Wes Etheredge, a meteorologist for WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts to The Times. “The one good thing about it is it’s moving somewhat quickly. It’s not hanging around.”

Neither were many canyon residents.

In Holy Jim Canyon, there were conflicting reports on the number of people who were evacuated, ranging from eight to 10, plus four dogs. Holy Jim residents said rutted dirt roads leading to the small colony were washed out and impassable. Resident Steve Hansel said trouble came loud and fast Sunday night and worsened Monday.

“Huge rocks were being tossed around” by a fast-moving creek, Hansel said, stretching his arms widely to demonstrate the size of the boulders. “You could hear them rolling around, ‘boom-boom-boom.’ It sounded like thunder.”

A half-dozen other residents declined to budge Monday, despite the growing slide threat, according to authorities and those who were evacuated.

“We strongly encouraged those individuals to take us up on our offer to fly them out of there,” said Capt. Scott Brown of the Orange County Fire Authority. “For various reasons, they chose not to.”

In Canyon Acres in Laguna Beach, resident Rupert Harwood said his street was under a foot of water when a “huge rumbling noise” just after 10 p.m. apparently signaled the return of slide activity that has plagued the area in the past.

“It felt like an earthquake,” said Mady Hornig, who said a mudslide occurred behind her home, uprooting a tree.

Another resident stood on the street yelling, “Get out. Get out.”

Five Orange County Fire strike teams were en route to the community just off Laguna Canyon Road after reports of slides prompted Laguna Beach crews to call for help, Brown said. Evacuations were expected.

In Silverado Canyon, one home reportedly was endangered after debris damned water nearby, while at least one house in Modjeska Canyon was swamped by mud as three feet of rushing water covered Harding Canyon Road. But, at 10 p.m., there were no reports of major damage.

Earlier Monday, authorities deployed swift-water rescue crews after a report that two girls had been swept into danger by a raging flood channel in Irvine. However, the crews found no one and Irvine Police Sgt. Scott Cade said the report was unverified.

Some familiar road closures began as the rain came. The California Highway Patrol reported it was shutting down Pacific Coast Highway between Golden West Street and Warner Avenue in Huntington Beach, a perennial waterlogged stretch next to Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve. A stretch of the Coast Highway was also closed in Laguna Beach, where rising waters overwhelmed downtown curbs and sidewalks.

The California Highway Patrol added that Laguna Canyon Road was again closed between the San Diego Freeway and El Toro Road, a repeat of weekend precautions taken on the winding, flood-prone road. Also, Santiago Canyon Road remained closed near Jamboree Road as workers fixing a sinkhole continued to be stalled by the storm.

CHP Officer Bruce Mauldin said calls for help were up about one fourth from the typical day. “This is nothing new for us. It’s the usual. Pretty much the normal rainy day scenario,” Mauldin said.

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The day’s rainfall was expected to push the seasonal total past 22 inches at an official gauge in Santa Ana, about triple the average for the season beginning July 1. Etheredge said it was not clear whether the storm’s intensity would match that of two of the previous worst of the season, on Dec. 6 and Feb. 6. He cautioned that while the season has been unusually wet as a result of a warm-water weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, Monday’s storm could not be blamed exclusively on El Nino.

But people in Orange County, battered as much by El Nino news bulletins as the rain itself, could be excused for thinking otherwise. Throughout the county, residents were on guard for bursts of mobile mud and water as the storm bore down.

In Laguna Beach, Alphonse DeGroot was awakened early Monday to a neighbor knocking on his door. A mud slide that started high up on a slope above his property the day before had flowed down 150 feet, leaving a wide swath of chocolate-colored mud covering an ice plant and small shrubs in his yard.

“It started over there,” said DeGroot, 54, pointing to a hill top. “That’s a lot of dirt that came down. You can see that it moved a lot of stuff.”

DeGroot’s neighbor, Larry Ragle, 65, said that he and his wife first saw the mud moving Sunday afternoon.

“It was like a lava flow,” Ragle recalled. “It carried plants with it. You could actually see it move down.”

By Monday morning, city workers had sandbagged portions of Castle Rock Road, a private street, and cleared some of the mud to provide quick access for vehicles in case of an emergency, said Steve May, Laguna Beach city engineer.

For residents such as DeGroot and Ragle, the mud and threat of more slippage was a price to pay for living in the secluded area above Laguna Canyon Road.

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“You always have to be concerned about flooding, rains or fire,” Ragle said. “The trade-off is, this is a beautiful place to live.”

While authorities were concerned about the danger of slides in Laguna Beach and elsewhere, the county’s flood control system appeared to be holding up well.

Irvine Lake spilled over its barriers at 8 a.m., said Bill Reiter, chief of the county storm center, the earliest date in memory that the lake had breached capacity at this point in the winter cycle.

“We’ve gotten to the point where everything is so saturated, there’s no place for the water to go except to run off,” Reiter said. “Even the smallest amount of rainfall can make the channels full.”

But the overflow ran into Santiago Creek and was safely caught by a flood control basin in Villa Park, where county engineers said there was plenty of unused storage capacity.

Prado Dam, too, in Riverside County, was at a mere 8% of capacity, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Orange County officials. The dam is the main regulator of storm flows into the Santa Ana River watershed.

Meanwhile, the continuous storms may be washing away profits for Orange County farmers. Strawberries picked at this time of year, the first on the market, typically sell for higher prices than those picked later in the season.

But with every storm, fewer berries can be sold at market. Instead, some are sold to processors for juice or jams at prices that barely cover expenses, farmers said. Worse, much of the fruit has rotted in the rain.

A year ago, in the week of Feb. 14, growers in Orange County and other parts of Southern California shipped 397,000 strawberry trays to market. This year, only 70,000 were harvested in the same period, an 82% decline.

“These are the berries we don’t want to lose,” said A.G. Kawamura, who farms 60 acres in Irvine. He estimated 30% to 40% of his marketable berries have been damaged.

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Elsewhere in California, the storm triggered mudslides and floods that blocked roads, cut rail lines and forced the evacuation of 5,000 residents of Santa Paula.

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 the Ventura Freeway in both directions. Both Highway 150 and Highway 30 were cut by flooding, leaving the city of 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.

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 the Ventura Freeway 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.

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 in a series of rigorous weather systems that have punished the state since Feb. 1.

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.

Times staff writers David Reyes, Tini Tran, H.G. Reza, Tina Nguyen, Valerie Burgher, David Haldane, Daryl Strickland, Eric Malnic, Daryl Kelley and correspondent Frank Messina contributed to this report.

Nick Anderson can be reached at (714) 966-5975 or by e-mail at nick.anderson@latimes.com