Sky Is Falling, in Part

Rain pelted Orange County for a second day Wednesday, causing a roof collapse at a Fullerton business, power outages and high bacteria levels from runoff at beaches.

Late Wednesday, three people were pulled from the water near the Seal Beach Pier in an apparently storm-related incident, officials said. Two were taken to a hospital, one in full cardiac arrest, they said.

Coastal and mountain areas were under a flash flood watch, and the California Highway Patrol reported 123 accidents from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, many more than usual.

Two employees at AXI Furniture, a Fullerton manufacturer, suffered minor injuries when a roughly 15-by-15-foot corner of the roof gave way under the weight of water pooling around a clogged drain.

“There was a lot of water,” said Phai Mai, 33, who was treated and released from a hospital.

The downpour dumped an inch or more on Orange County coastal areas in the 24 hours ending Wednesday afternoon. That brought the local seasonal total to nearly 5 inches, about 2 1/2 inches below normal.

In Ventura County, this second, more intense wave of the region’s first major storm of the year dumped up to 4 inches, triggering mudslides and contributing to more than 100 accidents, from fender benders to overturned trucks.

Firefighters and divers sped to a sandbar at the mouth of the Ventura River, where a homeless man lay motionless under a green sleeping bag.

“People were standing around looking at this guy, and my God, the ocean was eating away big chunks of the sandbar,” said Dick Henderson of Mission Viejo, a tour leader who called 911.

A sheriff’s helicopter landed yards from the sleeping man just as a Harbor Patrol boat chugged by and a lifeguard atop a surfboard glided onto the sandbar. The man was loaded onto the chopper, along with his bicycle, and taken to an ambulance at a nearby parking lot, which then took him to a hospital.

Farther north, on the grade of the Golden State Freeway known as the Grapevine, a sliding hillside trapped cars in up to three feet of mud, rocks and brush.

CHP officers shut down the southbound lanes, while Caltrans workers labored into the evening to shore up the slope.

“As quickly as Caltrans is grading it up, it’s probably coming down twice as fast,” CHP Sgt. Jack Skaggs said. “Right now we’re fighting a losing battle.”

In the Los Angeles area alone, the California Highway Patrol logged more than 400 traffic accidents and other incidents by mid-Wednesday, about four times the number from a comparable but dry period last week.

In the San Fernando Valley community of Pacoima, a driver died when his van rear-ended a Caltrans truck, but it was unclear whether the weather was a factor.

The relatively warm rainstorm, from the southwest Pacific, was expected to drop as much as 5 inches by Friday’s end, and forecasters weren’t ruling out more rain through Sunday. With temperatures remaining in the 50s, snow was predicted only at elevations higher than 7,500 feet.

“Warm storms are the ones that carry a lot of moisture,” National Weather Service meteorologist Bruce Rockwell said. “It’s a pretty impressive storm.”

If the weather makes commuters curse, residents in rural canyons rejoiced. Slopes in the Santa Ana Mountains were sprouting wildflowers in yellow, blue and purple.

“We need it very badly,” said Bruce Newell, who oversees the firehouse in Modjeska Canyon. “Even with the rain that we had before Christmas, things have dried up.”

For now, there’s little concern that canyon creeks will surge beyond their banks.

“There’s plenty of capacity,” Newell said. “If the storms kept coming at heavy rates in short periods repeatedly, then it would eventually catch up, the creeks would be full. But for a few weeks at least, we don’t have any real concerns.”

In Seal Beach, whose beachfront homes are vulnerable in storms, lifeguards said the storm’s south-to-north track and relatively low tides have helped the city escape flooding for now.

Steve Cushman, Seal Beach’s chief lifeguard, said he’s more worried about what will happen when the rain stops.

“The concern we have is trash coming down the San Gabriel River, which dumps out into Seal Beach,” Cushman said. “All the stuff that has been trapped against the rocks comes floating down into the ocean. You can often see a trail of brown water in the ocean after a storm of this nature.”

County health officials said ocean bacteria levels exceed standards in spots from Huntington Beach to San Clemente, but no beaches were closed because of them.

Southern California Edison reported power outages to 10,500 Orange County customers, lasting half a minute to several hours. Officials said the hardest-hit areas were in Buena Park and Santa Ana.

This storm ended six weeks of spring-like weather and followed the driest January on record in Southern California.

The National Weather Service said this week’s rain may well boost this year’s regional total to normal or above-average levels.

Ski and snowboarding slopes in the San Bernardino Mountains were closed Wednesday. No snow was coming down, just rain. It was too warm and humid to make any flakes.

“With the [low] volume of business that we’d be doing in the rain, it’s just more prudent for us to close down and keep our snow in good shape,” said Chris Riddle, Snow Summit’s marketing director.

Groomers were ready to clean up the slopes in time for this, the Presidents Day weekend, the last holiday of the winter season.

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Times staff writers Mike Anton, Steve Chawkins, Hanah Cho and Janet Wilson contributed to this report.