Cooling, Sea Breezes Forecast

The San Fernando Valley baked for a second straight day--with temperatures soaring over 100 degrees in some areas--while thunderstorms and flash floods pelted desert communities.

One shower rolled through the Palmdale area about 3 p.m., dropping rain and hail and spinning off winds up to 50 mph that snapped a number of large trees.

There were several lightning strikes, one of which apparently knocked out traffic signals for two miles along California 138.

One man might have been a victim of a lightning strike at 3:30 p.m. at 15th Street West and Avenue K-8 in Lancaster, a Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman said. The 33-year-old man was treated at Antelope Valley Hospital and released.

“We can’t say he was hit by lightning,” a hospital spokeswoman said, but “he was in the vicinity of a lightning strike.”

There were no reports of flood-related damage.

“There was some flooding in low-lying areas, but the water dissipated fast and there were no reports of damage,” said Sgt. Larry Mead of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Antelope Valley station.

Elsewhere, the heat and mugginess began to take its toll on workers who toil outdoors.

A land surveyor scrambling up and down a steep, scrubby hillside in Sun Valley collapsed around noon Tuesday and was rushed to a nearby hospital.

When a team of six firefighters rushed to the scene to hoist him up in a special rescue basket, one of the firefighters succumbed to the heat as well, crumpling to the ground with severe leg cramps.

Both were rushed to nearby Pacifica Hospital of the Valley, where they were being tested and rehydrated.

“We’d already been out working two and a half hours in the dry, hot brush,” said David Lindell, a land surveyor whose employee, Joseph Warren-LaCasella collapsed. “It just sort of sucks the liquid out of you. This is the first time this has ever happened in 37 years.”

It was hot and muggy again Tuesday in the Los Angeles Basin, but not as bad as it had been Monday. In Van Nuys, the temperature reached a high of 97 degrees, in Woodland Hills 102, and in Chatsworth it hovered at 99.

Tuesday’s high temperature in downtown Los Angeles was 86 degrees, 4 degrees below Monday’s top reading and 12 degrees below the record for the date, set in 1990.

Meteorologist Stacey White of WeatherData Inc., which provides weather information for The Times, said residents should get some heat relief today as cooler air from the ocean blows onshore, bringing patchy clouds and sea breezes.

Nevertheless, Dr. Philip Schwarzman, medical director for the emergency department at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, said no one should be working, playing or exerting themselves outside in the heat.

On Monday, a patient he treated for heat exhaustion was a construction worker who had been working outside for eight hours.

“The problem we are having now, in addition to heat, is we have humidity,” Schwarzman said. “That makes it harder to dissipate the heat.”

Schwarzman urged Valley residents to drink lots of fluids, and remain indoors as much as possible. He said symptoms of heat exhaustion include everything from dizziness to nausea, malaise and muscle cramps.

Meanwhile, fan and air conditioning stores around the Valley did a brisk business Tuesday, as flushed, overheated Valley residents scurried in, searching for anything that would cool them off.

Mike Berman, manager of Lamps Plus in Chatsworth, estimated that 80% of his business in the past two days had been ceiling fans.

“When there is a heat wave, that is all they [the customers] buy, fans,” Berman said. “A guy came in the other day, with a 15-room house, and he bought a fan for every room.”

Abbey Borghei, manager of Banner Air Conditioning in Van Nuys, said his company has been deluged with calls since Monday morning--many from commercial buildings alarmed that their air conditioning was not kicking in after the weekend.

“It’s been extremely busy,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many calls we get. Last night till 9 p.m. they were calling us.”

He reminded customers that humidity has slowed air conditioners down. The machines expend 75% of their energy sucking moisture out of the air, and only about 25% actually cooling it.

Elsewhere, the weather caused at least one fatality, when a U.S. Marine died early Tuesday after being swept away in a flash flood near Twentynine Palms.

Officials said heavy rains hammered the Marine Corps’ desert training center shortly before midnight Monday, unleashing torrents of muddy water that engulfed a light armored vehicle carrying four Marines.

The flood waters pulled Lance Cpl. Javier D. Ponce, 21, of Ontario, Ore., from the vehicle, according to Marine 1st Lt. Patricia Restrepo, a public information officer at the center.

She said Ponce was found downstream about an hour later. He was rushed by helicopter to the Navy hospital in Twentynine Palms, where he was pronounced dead at 2:24 a.m. The cause of death was not immediately determined.

The three other Marines in the vehicle were unharmed, but two enlisted men at the desert training center were hospitalized briefly for observation after lightning struck the ground near them.

Ponce’s death was the second blamed on flash floods spawned by the recent siege of monsoonal weather. On Sunday, a landslide caused by flooding in the San Bernardino Mountains hamlet of Forest Falls claimed the life of 36-year-old Allison Crow and destroyed about 18 homes.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said the people of Los Angeles have been using a bit more electricity than usual in their efforts to stay cool, but reserves have been more than adequate and usage has been nowhere near the record set last Sept. 1.

Guy Pearson, another meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said the weather should start improving today. “It’ll start getting cooler and dryer as that monsoonal system starts moving east,” he said.

Times staff writer Agnes Diggs contributed to this story.

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Heat Relief in Sight

The National Weather Service expects a dip in the jet stream today to push the high temperatures and humidity out of Southern California.