Relentless Rain Pounds O.C.

Roofs collapsed, hillside homes teetered in mud, cars and drivers were swept into a raging wash, and mobile home parks were flooded to their windows Saturday as the season’s first El Nino-related storm chose Orange County for its worst punishment.

Residents in parts of the county fled to their roofs to escape floods, coastal and canyon homes were evacuated, main roads were blocked and cars were submerged on city streets. Stranded people were rescued by emergency workers in rubber boats.

Incredibly, by Saturday evening, no one had been seriously injured in the county, although several unconfirmed reports of people being washed away in waterways had one fire official wondering “if we’ll end up finding bodies” today.

When it was over, more rain had fallen on Orange County than during any other 24-hour period in more than a century, or since records have been kept. Mel Newman, an environmental specialist with the Orange County Storm Center, said the deluge may have been as intense as any in the past 250 years.

The chaotic scene in Orange County contrasted to Los Angeles County and other nearby areas, where only isolated incidents kept emergency workers busy. Weather experts said Orange County’s ring of mountains were the cause, deflecting winds upward and adding even more moisture to storm clouds.

The effects of terrain are evident in Saturday’s rainfall totals, said Wes Etheredge, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. About 4 inches fell in Los Angeles, compared with almost 7 inches in areas of Orange County. The rains should relent today, with only scant showers expected.

“The rainfall will not even be close to what you saw,” Etheredge said. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

In Silverado Canyon, fire officials condemned and evacuated four homes after a mudslide about noon splintered beams, weakened supports and crashed through the garage wall of one house, and a boulder crushed an unoccupied pickup, said Orange County Fire Capt. Dennis Childress.

Hilda Way Street off Silverado Canyon Road was covered with 2 feet of water and “mud like quicksand,” Childress said.

Laurie Dixon, 41, said her 13- and 11-year-old sons “were playing video games, and the house started shaking. And it got louder and louder. They thought it was thunder. They got scared and ran under the kitchen table,” as the mud crashed through the garage.

Mudslides were even worse in Black Star, Baker and Santiago canyons, where brush fires in October burned off hillside vegetation that would have stemmed some of the flow, Childress said. Two homes in Black Star Canyon were evacuated as a precaution, he said.

In the flood plain of Huntington Beach, residents of three mobile home parks awoke to find water chest deep in places, and more than 300 residents were evacuated at about 9 a.m. to a nearby school.

The same scene played out in other low-lying areas such as Costa Mesa, where residents bailed out cars and rushed to save possessions.

But 27-year-old Ha Nguyen and other early-morning drivers on Lake Forest Drive in Lake Forest may have had the most harrowing experience. At 5:20 a.m., as Nguyen approached Muirlands Boulevard, rising waters broke a nearby retaining wall and engulfed her car to the hood. With a huge surge, it scooped up her car and two others and dropped them 4 feet into a wash.

“My car spun around and around, and I lost control and it pulled me down and off the road,” she said. “I was scared to death. I don’t know how come I’m still alive.”

The current swept the cars 60 feet into the creek beside Forest Gardens mobile home park, crashing them against a grated storm drain, said Fire Capt. Rod Van Sickle, a member of the rescue crew that responded.

The grate “was like a car-catcher,” he said. “They stopped up against it and these people crawled out their sunroofs and windows, any way they could.”

The cars blocked the flow into the drain, pushing more water back onto the road, Van Sickle said.

“When we got there, the water was so high on the road there was a Volkswagen in the street that you could just barely see the roof of.”

Later, Van Sickle and his Seal Beach-based swift-water rescue crew were airlifted to San Diego Creek near Barranca Parkway in Irvine after a report of a person caught in the current.

“We searched the area and we didn’t find anyone,” Van Sickle said. “I don’t know if there was nobody in the water or if we’ll end up finding bodies” Sunday.

In Costa Mesa, some residents opened their doors about 8 a.m. to find their street transformed into a lake. Many began shoveling dirt into embankments and moving family photos, home computers and furniture away from doors and windows.

“I’ve been here since 1961, and this is the worst I’ve seen it,” said Ernie Southhall, who watched a driver try to make it down the 1600 block of Iowa Street only to have his car fill with water and sink up to its windows. “It’s scary. You can’t see the road from curb to curb.”

In Laguna Beach, Laguna Canyon Road was closed as workers tried to clear mud and water. Everyone except residents and workers were turned away at roadblocks on the main thoroughfare.

Also in Laguna, three beach-side homes were in jeopardy Saturday evening from a wall of water that overtaxed storm drains and gushed past the multimillion dollar houses, “undermining their foundations,” police said. The homes, about a mile south of Aliso Pier on Coast Highway, were evacuated.

*

In Newport Beach, water flowed into homes and apartments. At the Oakwood Apartments, 30 units suffered “total water log” despite the best efforts of managers and workers in recent weeks to gird for the coming rains, said manager Brian Morelan. “We had been preparing . . . but we hadn’t expected 3 to 4 inches in an hour.”

In all, county fire officials reported five collapsed roofs, 36 fire alarms, 25 medical aid calls, 110 reports of flooding, 35 car crashes and 13 assorted rescues Friday and Saturday. Fire officials in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Huntington Beach and other cities did not have breakdowns of their rescue calls but said scores of them kept emergency workers on the run.

The storm powering through the region was pushed by El Nino, the oft-publicized weather phenomenon that has been the talk of Southern California for months. The weather condition--which stokes storms and alters their paths by adding tropical moisture to their mix--lived up to its billing in this its first appearance in 1997. Still, not everyone was ready.

In Costa Mesa, Police Sgt. Clay Epperson said desperate people were stealing sand from the sandboxes at city parks and jamming the streets around fire stations distributing sandbags. He said some people became upset when firefighters had to leave to respond to emergency calls.

“We had people getting quite hot under the collar,” Epperson said. “Apparently a lot of people were in denial over what this El Nino might bring.”

The brunt of the flooding and damage hit the county’s coastal and low-lying areas.

*

In Laguna Beach, sand and landscaping was washed from under the boardwalk, leaving about 40 feet of the walkway suspended with nothing supporting it. Laguna Beach lifeguard Chief Mark Klosterman said his lifeguards had to keep back a crowd just waiting for it to collapse.

“We had to cordon off the whole area at the Main Beach, because we had hundreds of spectators waiting for something to happen. If somebody had fallen in, basically they would have fallen into a flood channel and on their way out to sea,” Klosterman said.

Throughout the day, helicopters and rescue crews on personal watercraft patrolled the Santa Ana River and other waterways for anyone who may have been swept up in the current. When one woman thought she saw three children floating in the Santa Ana River in Costa Mesa, dozens of firefighters, police and lifeguards mobilized. But the alarm was false.

“It’s gratifying because there’s nobody in the water,” said Costa Mesa Battalion Chief Jim Ellis. “But it’s bittersweet because we have about 60 people who could have been doing something else. . . . But somebody thought they saw something in the water, and they did the right thing by calling us.”

County firefighters on their way to a call in Irvine about 6:30 a.m. happened upon two men and a woman trapped in a car, in danger of being washed away by a 3-foot wall of water. The trio was honking the horn and waving for help as the torrent swirled around them at about 30 mph, said Fire Engineer Bob Hutnyan.

“If it had been a little bit worse, and we hadn’t happened by there, they could’ve been dead,” he said.

Amazingly, he said, “other vehicles continued trying to drive around us to get through there, thinking maybe they could make it. If you see water, don’t even try it.”

Throughout Orange County, 14,000 homes and businesses lost power during the storm, an Edison Co. spokesman said.

In Newport Beach, two docks broke from their moorings, the Harbor Patrol said, and debris ranging up to telephone-pole sized logs washed into the Back Bay.

“Everything that’s in the flood control is going to end up in the bay,” said Sgt. Karl Van Voigt. “I’m sure there’s probably tons of minor damage, but it will take days for the owners to find it all.”

In Silverado Canyon, Ed and Leslie Amador, whose garden and driveway on Thisa Way was washed away by a mudslide, packed up and left Saturday night. If the mud didn’t get them, they said, the boulders might.

“The reality we have to face is, this is the first storm of the season,” said Leslie Amador, 41. “We have a very long way to go.”

Orange and Ventura counties were hit so hard by the storm and Los Angeles County was seemingly spared thanks to simple geography, Etheredge said.

As the air slides up the mountains and hills in Orange and Ventura counties, the terrain provides lift that increases the moisture in the storm clouds, he said. By comparison, the basin that is Los Angeles has nothing to cause that phenomenon, and the rain clouds dump their moisture before they have a chance to get too heavy.

And altitude doesn’t matter as much as terrain, Etheredge said. Even the hills around Laguna each give the rain clouds “extra lift that provides enough stimulus to provide more rain.”

“It doesn’t matter how high the mountains are, just that they are there,” he said. “With the way the coast faces and the way the foothills and mountains face, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties got it head-on.”

Orange County has activated a public information number for residents with flood problems: (714) 834-7285. The public is asked to call this number and not 911.

Times staff writers Davan Maharaj and Lisa Richardson and correspondents Susan Deemer, Catherine Werblin and Lisa Addison contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rainfall Totals

Total rainfall from midnight Friday to 5 p.m. Saturday:

1. Lake Forest: 7.01

2. Laguna Beach: 6.81

3. Mission Viejo: 6.26

4. Irvine: 6.06

5. Silverado Canyon: 5.67

6. Corona del Mar: 5.63

7. Newport Bay: 4.41

8. Santa Ana: 4.41

9. Laguna Niguel: 4.25

10. Costa Mesa: 4.06

11. Westminster: 3.82

12. Fountain Valley: 3.78

13. Anaheim: 2.48

14. Huntington Beach: 2.83

15. Yorba Linda: 2.68

16. Garden Grove: 2.32

17. Laguna Hills: 2.24

18. Seal Beach: 2.20

19. Tustin: 2.17

20. Brea: 2.13

21. Fullerton: 1.97

22. Los Alamitos: 1.77

23. Cypress: 1.65

24. San Clemente: 1.26

25. San Juan Capistrano: 1.22

Source: Orange County Storm Center

--COMPILED BY SUSAN DEEMER

Storm Damage by the Numbers

1. Costa Mesa--About 10 a.m., an elderly woman is evacuated from her flooded home in the 600 block of Park Drive.

2. Irvine Lake--About 4 a.m., county crews respond to seven major mudslides along Santiago Canyon and Black Star Canyon roads, the site of major brush fires in October.

Huntington Beach--Pacific Coast Highway closed by flooding between Seapoint and Warner avenues about 3 a.m., and from Golden West Street to Warner Avenue about 11 a.m.

3. Newport Beach--Coast Highway closed by flooding between Brookhurst Street and Newport Coast Drive about 3 a.m.

4. Irvine--A mudslide about 6 a.m. blocks San Joaquin Hills tollway at Newport Coast Drive.

5. Lake Forest--A storm channel collapses and several cars and their drivers fall in about noon at Lake Forest Drive and Muirlands Boulevard.

6. San Juan Capistrano--Both sides of a storm channel at Trabuco Creek and Del Obispo Street give way about 1 p.m.

7. Lake Forest--Water rushing through a natural channel in Serrano Creek erodes the roots of eucalyptus trees along the bank, causing them to fall into the channel, then chews up another 10 feet of residents’ yards.

8. Laguna Beach--Mudslides and flooding block Laguna Canyon Road, and officials close it about 11 a.m.

9. Huntington Beach--About 8 a.m., hundreds of residents are evacuated from mobile home parks at Brookhurst Street south of Garfield Avenue as water rises to the windows; rescue teams in rubber boats collect residents and take them to a nearby school.

10. Laguna Beach--Beaches wither under late afternoon rains, and three beach-side homes about a mile south of Aliso Pier on Coast Highway are evacuated.

11. Laguna Beach--Several motorists are trapped in their cars, surrounded by mud and debris, at Nyes Place and Coast Highway.

Compiled by STEVE CARNEY and DAVID REYES / Los Angeles Times