Relentless Rain Swamps Rails, Roads

By DARYL KELLEY

Feb. 24, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

VENTURA —

Raging flood waters closed the region’s main rail line and busiest freeway, isolated the Ojai Valley for hours and forced thousands of Santa Paula residents to flee their homes Monday as heavy rain swamped Ventura County in the wettest February in local history.

Steady showers for 24 hours dumped up to 9 inches of rain on the waterlogged county--prompting siren-screeching Santa Paula police to scour the city’s southeast corner and warn 2,000 residents to pack up and leave.

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

But by late afternoon, as rains eased, the Santa Paula Creek was receding and its banks were holding firm.

The same could not be said for the Metrolink commuter rail line washed out near Camarillo and the Union Pacific trestle undermined by the surging water of the Ventura River.

That main coastal train route will not reopen for weeks, and Amtrak service between Los Angeles and Seattle has been halted indefinitely, officials said.

The Ventura River washed over the Ventura Freeway, closing its northbound lanes for most of the day and its southbound lanes for several hours. Mud and water along the Rincon closed the freeway in both directions again late Monday.

The Ventura River and its tributaries overflowed their banks in several places--flooding 25 homes in east Ojai near Thacher Creek. Dozens of San Antonio Creek residents were forced to higher ground, and Ojai Valley roads were closed for part of the day.

“Wow. Big chunks of the mountain are coming down,” said Sheri Connelly, manager of the Camp Comfort RV park near Ojai, as 72 permanent campers evacuated the creek-side camp about noon.

At its mouth, the Ventura River washed over the freeway for most of the afternoon--cresting around 2 p.m. with flows close to those in the floods of 1992 and 1995.

By midnight, the county’s largest river--the wide and powerful Santa Clara--was expected to overflow its banks in Oxnard, at McGrath State Beach, and in Fillmore, at the sewer plant, with flows higher than any since the massive floods of 1969.

“This was close. We had a big scare today,” said county hydrologist Dolores Taylor as stream waters receded late in the day. “The worst scare was Santa Paula Creek. We had the highest flow we’ve seen there since 1978.”

And, around the county, “I think there will be an awful lot of damage here and there--to the roads and the flood channels and the infrastructure,” she said.

Erosion of farmland along the Santa Clara River is also certain to add to $19 million in losses that farmers have sustained from storms this month, she said.

In all, the county toll from this month’s storms was $36 million--prior to Monday’s damage, officials said.

Monday’s storm knocked out electric power for 24,000 customers, including 3,300 students who were sent home early from schools in Fillmore and Piru. Ventura High lost power but held classes without lights.

Still, emergency officials could not help but think that things could have been much worse.

“The story was the same all over the county today--if God had kept it raining another hour or two we would have had some real trouble,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Ed Tumbleson. “There’s a levee in the Ojai Valley that was getting ready to breach, and in Santa Paula and in Piru. But the rain stopped just in time.”

Rainfall analysts put the February storms in historical perspective: Never has the city of Ventura in its 131-year history received more rain in a single month than the 20 inches that has fallen in February, climatologist Tom Johnston reported.

The same intense, El Nino-boosted storm raked all of California with torrential rains and wind-driven snow, triggering mudslides and floods that blocked roads and cut off rail lines.

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.

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 2 feet expected above 7,000 feet in the Lake Tahoe area and 3 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. In Los Angeles County, 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.

Monday’s storm swept ashore from the Pacific before dawn, hammering coastal valleys with rains that flooded residential neighborhoods 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.

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.”

However, meteorologist Gary Ryan of the National Weather Service in Oxnard said that high tides and big surf could reproduce the devastating swells that hit the Ventura County coastline Jan. 30--damaging numerous seafront homes and flooding neighborhoods.

“The west-facing beaches might have swells of 8 to 12 feet and a high tide of 6 feet, and that’s a bad combination,” Ryan said.

Even if skies clear for the rest of the month, Ventura County has registered record rainfall for February in most local communities, analysts said.

With the latest storm dumping 2 to 3 inches of rain on coastal cities and 9 inches on Nordhoff Ridge above Ojai, analyst Johnston said that Thousand Oaks had received about 17 inches this month and topped its previous monthly record of 12.47 inches. Ojai had received a record 20 inches, he said.

But Ventura’s 20 inches this month is most striking, Johnston said.

“For Ventura, it’s the wettest month in history,” he said. “For some reason it’s been dumping it all right here in Ventura. Lucky us, huh?”

What those totals meant Monday was that Ventura’s two largest rivers roared like they haven’t for years.

The Ventura River rushed through the Ojai Valley, actually topping California 150 bridge at one point and threatening to breach a levee that would have flooded 400 homes in the Burham Road area.

“The Ventura River just kept rising and rising,” said flood control’s Taylor. “They had 13,000 cubic feet per second spilling over the Matilija Dam Spillway and there was 1,000 [cubic feet per second] going over the Lake Casitas Spillway, so the total flow of the Ventura River kept rising so quickly.”

But it stopped just as fast once it peaked at an estimated 50,000 cubic feet per second about 2 p.m., she said. That compares to record flows of about 64,000 feet in 1962 and about 58,000 in 1969, she said.

The flow on the giant Santa Clara River was even more extraordinary, reaching an estimated 150,000 cubic feet per second Monday night, compared to a predicted 110,000, and frightening those who watched it climb, Taylor said.

“It’s the largest flow since 1969,” she said. “And we’ll get some overflow and damage at weaker points, but this will not come close to breaching the levee that protects Oxnard. That was built for 225,000.”

“I thought this was going to be the big flood,” she said. “But we’ll have to wait for another time, thank God.”

Times staff writers Miguel Bustillo and Tracy Wilson and correspondent Richard Warchol contributed to this story.