Southland breathes easier and dries out as storms move out of the area

After a rainstorm that sent mud and rocks tumbling into roads, trapped about 90 vehicles on Angeles Crest Highway for hours and caused widespread power outages, residents and cleanup crews reported only minimal damage as the storm clouds gave way to clearing skies Sunday.

Mandatory evacuations, which had been issued for more than 40 homes Saturday and an additional six overnight, were lifted Sunday morning in La Crescenta, La Cañada Flintridge and Big Tujunga Canyon, according to L.A. County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida.

La Cañada Flintridge residents Diane and Gary Stibal returned to their neighborhood Sunday fearing the worst. Having spent the night at a friend’s house in Huntington Beach, the couple worried that their backyard hill, denuded in the Station fire, had flowed into their house. When they arrived and saw that the $20,000 worth of chain-link fences, flow systems and storm windows they had installed had helped minimize the damage, they embraced.

“The measures we took seem to be working,” Diane Stibal, 68, said. Although water had seeped under the house and destroyed their hardwood floors and mud caused the structure’s stucco base to crack, Stibal felt lucky. “This was supposed to be our golden years, but instead it’s our brown years,” she joked.

Crews from the county Department of Public Works spent Sunday morning cleaning up muddied roads, inspecting facilities and monitoring the 28 debris basins in the burn area.

They remained well below capacity during the storm and collected mostly mud, said Bob Spencer, a department spokesman.

Public works officials joined a team of about 40 law enforcement and fire officials monitoring the storm overnight from a command post at the county’s Fire Camp 2 near the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The most intense rainfall occurred between 1:30 a.m. and 4 a.m., said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Mark Savage.

In general, authorities said they were relieved that the effect of drenching rains was fairly muted.

“Overall, the system worked as designed, and this is a template we’ll be using for future events,” Savage said.

In the Angeles National Forest, a wall protecting two privately owned cabins in Millard Canyon gave way late Saturday, allowing 4 to 5 feet of mud to pile up against them.

A resident of one of the cabins had left ahead of the mud flow, and the other cabin was unoccupied, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Rich Phelps.

The extent of the damage was unknown, and engineers and architects will be called in today to determine whether the buildings are structurally sound, Phelps said.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spokeswoman Gale Harris reported that about 1,400 customers remained without electricity Sunday in weather-related outages across the city. She had no information on when repairs would be completed.

About 5,400 Southern California Edison customers were without electricity in communities including Big Creek, Lake Arrowhead, Victorville, Long Beach and Compton, said company spokeswoman Mashi Nyssen.

Outages were caused primarily by high winds and debris such as branches and palm fronds falling on power lines.

Angeles Crest Highway remained closed Sunday evening because of mudslides at mile marker 26 in La Cañada Flintridge to Aliso Canyon Road in the Angeles National Forest. Big Tujunga Canyon Road was also closed from Mt. Gleason to Angeles Forest Highway.

Three people were killed over the weekend in traffic accidents that were possibly weather-related.

A 36-year-old Pasadena man traveling at an unsafe speed for wet conditions lost control of his motorcycle on the 210 Freeway on Saturday morning and was hit by a big rig, California Highway Patrol Officer Monica Posada said.

Later that night, the driver of a Honda lost control of his vehicle, struck a median near the entrance of a tunnel and overturned near Long Beach Airport, said Nancy Pratt, a Long Beach Police Department spokeswoman. The driver and another male were pronounced dead at the scene.

carla.rivera@latimes.com

gerrick.kennedy@latimes.com

Times staff writer Corina Knoll contributed to this report.