Rain Ravages O.C., Snarls Traffic : Weather: Mudslides are feared in fire-denuded areas in Laguna Beach. Countywide state of emergency declared.

One of the worst storms in years ravaged Orange County on Wednesday, forcing the Board of Supervisors to declare a state of emergency as residents in Laguna Beach girded for a massive mudslide amid road closures, traffic accidents, power outages, evacuations and marinas ripped apart by rampaging winds.

Despite police units in Huntington Beach responding to 911 calls via boats, and diners in a Laguna Beach restaurant being trapped in four feet of water, only minor injuries resulted from the more than 100 vehicle accidents reported by the California Highway Patrol.

The storm saved its worst for Laguna, where rain brought a grim reminder of fire as scores of residents made plans to evacuate while fearing the worst--a massive, onrushing slide in canyon areas laid bare by the inferno that devastated the area in 1993.

Homes in the rustic Canyon Acres part of Laguna were threatened by the specter of a slide, as flash-flood warnings issued by the National Weather Service prompted firefighters to convert three offices of a downtown bank building into an Emergency Operations Center.

Throughout the county, a record rainfall of nearly 4 inches--with one inch cascading during the evening rush hour alone--brought normal routines to a standstill.

“It’s like a hurricane,” said Laguna Beach resident Jeff Powers, who lost his Canyon Acres home in the firestorm 15 months ago and just began framing his new house last Friday. “I just watched somebody evacuate, just getting out by the skin of their teeth. Canyon Acres Drive is like a river.”

Although decreasing showers and winds are predicted today, another powerful storm is expected to strike Southern California on Saturday.

“The worst is behind us for now,” said Richard Stitt of the National Weather Service.

But the worst left its mark from one end of the county to the other:

* In Buena Park, a swift-water rescue team helped evacuate about 200 people from a neighborhood after flood channels overflowed. The residents were temporarily relocated in a senior citizens center and the City Council chambers, said Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young.

* In Newport Beach, a stretch of seawall behind six residences on Newport Harbor collapsed into the bay Wednesday night. No structures were threatened, but parts of patios and residences in the gated Balboa Coves community in the 4400 block of Coast Highway fell into the water.

* The flow of 911 calls throughout the county became so overwhelming Wednesday night that law-enforcement agencies sent out bulletins informing callers that they would respond only to “life-or-death” situations.

* The storm struck a fierce blow on area marinas, where gale-force winds broke dozens of boats loose from their moorings. In Sunset Beach, an entire 40-boat marina broke free at the height of the storm.

At Newport Harbor, winds gusting up to 50 m.p.h. prompted more than 40 service calls to the Harbor Patrol for boats coming loose and taking on water, said Sgt. Dean Cordell of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

“We were inundated,” Cordell said.

He said the entire marina at Portafino Marina in Sunset Beach “is gone. . . . It’s washed out and the boats have separated. It’s a mess because they’re getting out into Anaheim Bay near the Naval Weapons Station and are heading out to sea.”

* In Garden Grove, Orange County Transportation Authority buses brought wet and shivering evacuees to the Zeyen School, a Red Cross emergency center, where 20 cots were set up in the auditorium.

Among them was Joyce Elizondo, who was nursing her 2-month-old daughter, with her two other children, ages 5 and 3 1/2. The family had just been evacuated about 5 p.m. from their home on Bartlett Street with the help of Elizondo’s husband, Mark, who is a Garden Grove police officer.

“The whole house flooded,” Joyce Elizondo said. “I had no warning whatsoever. The water just kept coming in. I noticed the street was gone, the front lawn was gone, and then it just came in.”

Elizondo said she just had time to grab the diaper bag, while her husband ripped down a shower curtain to shield the family from the rain as they fled the house.

Eileen Goodenough, 74, was rescued from her home near Belgrave Avenue and Bartlett Street, near a blocked storm drain. She said she came home about 3 p.m. and found water seeping up from her kitchen floor. At first, she said, she tried wiping up the water.

“Then it got ahead of me,” she said. “My two cats are back there now, sitting on top of chairs. I’m just sick. I hated to leave, but they talked me into it.”

Goodenough said she was carried out of her home piggyback by firefighters. By then the water was about knee-deep in her house and waist-deep in the street.

* About 7 p.m., Westminster police evacuated two busloads of residents from a neighborhood near the intersection of Beach Boulevard and Hazard Avenue, where the water had risen to levels chest-high.

The residents were bused to Westminster’s La Quinta High School, where most were later picked by friends and relatives. By mid-evening, only a dozen or so remained in the school’s gymnasium, where a handful of excited children played tag as their weary parents looked on.

Cuong Pham, a 40-year-old auto mechanic, was among those who waited along with his mother, sister, brother-in-law and nephew. Pham said rain began to seep into their house around 4 p.m.; about 90 minutes later, he said, it was up to their waists.

“We wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t too bad but it was terrible. . . . I wouldn’t be too concerned but my mother is in a wheelchair,” Pham said. “We had to get her out when the water started coming up to the waistline.”

Sgt. Mark Groh of the Westminster Police Department said most of those evacuated took only a few personal items with them to the high school.

Ironically, even as the residents sought refuge from their flooded homes at the high school, custodians there were also mopping up. At least 2 inches of water had invaded the hallways of the school’s math and science wing, officials said, where eight classrooms were reported flooded.

* In Seal Beach, residents of the Old Town section of the city’s downtown area reported high water inside their homes, according to Police Capt. Gary Maiten. A temporary shelter was established in the McGaugh Elementary School auditorium and an emergency center set up at police headquarters. Lifeguards there reported five boats torn loose from the city’s dock and drifting out to sea.

* In Santa Ana, police hurried to push stalled cars out of intersections where water gathered in deep pools.

Around the city’s Civic Center at rush hour, county employees lined up outside office buildings waiting for rides, some of which never came. Several cars stalled out in front of Superior Court as knee-deep, fast-moving waters swirled through intersections and rushed toward overwhelmed storm drains.

* In Huntington Beach, police navigated the waist-high water by using boats to evacuate residents from cars, apartments and trailer parks.

In other parts of the city, workers rushed to place sand bags in Central Park to fend off a mudslide in an area the city recently graded. Huntington Beach Fire Capt. Chuck Burney said that by mid-afternoon, he was responding to reports of street flooding throughout the city.

During an interview with a reporter, Ron Hagan, the city’s director of community services, was startled by a window breaking a few feet away from his desk on the fifth floor of City Hall.

“Oh, my God, the wind. . . . Geez, there went the window,” Hagan said. “Rain is coming in my office now. I have to go.”

* Stephen Albright, electric systems manager for Anaheim Public Utilities, said a substation’s transformer outage caused about 5,000 customers to lose power.

* Southern California Edison reported that tens of thousands of county residents were left without power as a result of the rain and flooding. Areas hit included northern and central parts of the county, including Santa Ana, where a transformer had fallen into the road near Bristol Street; Saddleback Valley; Mission Viejo; and Laguna Beach, where, amid the worries of evacuations, the city was without telephone service for hours Wednesday night.

* No area was harder hit than Laguna Beach. Peter Ott, a resident of Laguna Beach’s Canyon Acres, called the flooding in the narrow canyon community “the worst, by far, we have had since the fire. . . . The street is flowing like a river.”

Tree limbs, loose sand bags and big chunks of asphalt were toppling in the mud down Canyon Acres Drive well into the night on Wednesday.

In other parts of Laguna, 10 diners at a Johnny Rocket’s hamburger outlet were trapped in what became a four-foot-deep wading pool, as floodwaters rushed into the restaurant at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Coast Highway.

By mid-afternoon, Laguna Canyon Road had been closed indefinitely due to flooding, which forced similar closures countywide. The National Weather Service warned, in particular, of “heavy mud and debris flows” in the fire-scarred areas of Laguna Beach and pulled no punches in its grim directive.

Fire victim Powers was one of hundreds of residents here who had just begun to cope with the early devastation of the flood as dusk descended on Wednesday.

“Every direction I look there are huge waterfalls coming off the hills, three, four, five feet across. My greatest fear is that people will get trapped,” he said.

While Laguna Beach residents anxiously awaited the worst of the downpour and the fate it might bring their troubled neighborhood, flooding throughout the county had contributed to 110 traffic accidents by 7 p.m.--more than double the daily norm--according to the California Highway Patrol.

In separate, unrelated accidents, two vehicles overturned near the junction of Interstate 5 and Junipero Serra Road in San Juan Capistrano, resulting in injuries to the drivers and extensive damage to the vehicles.

Some of the worst flooding occurred on California 74, known as the Ortega Highway, where mud and rock slides accounted for slow going, and by Wednesday night, had resulted in a complete closure from La Pata to the Riverside County line.

On the Riverside County side of the Ortega, a 55-year-old Lake Elsinore woman suffered perhaps Wednesday’s worst weather-related accident in Southern California. Her 1992 Chevy Cavalier spun out of control near Long Canyon Road, triggering a 1,000-foot fall down a steep hill to the bottom of a deep ravine, CHP officials said.

Headed west on the Ortega, Alice Dever--who was wearing a seat belt--suffered only a broken left hand and back pain, before making her way about a quarter of the way up the hill, where she managed to obtain help.

In other parts of Orange County, the California Department of Transportation was forced to close the following roadways:

* Westbound Artesia Freeway to both the northbound and southbound lanes of Orange Freeway between Anaheim and Santa Ana.

* Southbound Orange Freeway to eastbound Garden Grove Freeway between Anaheim and Santa Ana.

* Eastbound Gardenh Grove Freeway at Main Street in Santa Ana.

* Laguna Canyon Road from the San Diego Freeway to Coast Highway, and Coast Highway from Cliff Drive to Broadway, in Laguna.

* Northbound and southbound Pacific Coast Highway from Golden West Avenue to Warner Avenue in Huntington Beach.

* Northbound Santa Ana Freeway at the Beach Boulevard off-ramp in Buena Park, and northbound Santa Ana Freeway at the Costa Mesa Freeway in Santa Ana.

At the corner of Beach Boulevard and McFadden Avenue in Westminster, one vehicle was completely immersed.

* MORE RAIN COVERAGE: A18-19

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Relentless Rain

A punishing storm steadily dumped more than three inches of rain on Orange County Wednesday, causing street closures, mud and rockslides and power outages. A look at what the rain wrought:

Evacuations

1. Buena Park (7700 block of 11th Street)

2. Garden Grove (100 residents)

Street closures

South County

3. Ortega Highway in both directions from La Pata Avenue in San Juan Capistrano to the Riverside County line

Huntington Beach

4. Pacific Coast Highway in both directions between Golden West Street and Warner Avenue

5. Intersection of Heil Avenue and Newland Street in Huntington Beach

6. Newland Street between Pacific Coast Highway and Hamilton Avenue

7. North and southbound Edwards Street between Heil and Edinger avenues

Brea

8. Carbon Canyon Road between Valencia Avenue and the San Bernardino County line

Irvine

9. Irvine Boulevard near Sand Canyon Avenue

Laguna Beach

10. Beach Street between Coast Highway and Crown Valley Parkway

Cypress

11. Valley View Street

13. Ball Road

14. Bloomfield Street

15. Knott Avenue

16. Cerritos Avenue

Buena Park

17. Western Avenue between Manchester and Orangethorpe avenues

18. Beach Boulevard between Artesia Boulevard and Orangethorpe Avenue

Rockslides and mudslides

19. Various locations of Ortega Highway

Power outages

20. Parts of Laguna Beach

21. Parts of Santa Ana

22. Parts of Mission Viejo

23. Parts of Costa Mesa

24. Parts of Westminster

25. Parts of Huntington Beach

26. Parts of Cypress

27. Parts of Buena Park

Freeway closures

28. Laguna Canyon Road from the San Diego Freeway to Coast Highway

29. Santa Ana Freeway in both directions at Brookhurst Street

30. Northbound Santa Ana Freeway at Costa Mesa Freeway

31. Northbound Santa Ana Freeway at 17th Street

32. Northbound Santa Ana Freeway off-ramp to Beach Boulevard

33. Eastbound Garden Grove Freeway off-ramp to Brookhurst Street

34. Westbound Riverside Freeway transition to both directions of Orange Freeway

35. Eastbound and westbound Garden Grove Freeway at Main Street

Daily Deluge

Wednesday’s storm boosted the seasonal rain total past the norm for this time of the year. Rainfall for 24 hours around the county ending at 4 p.m. Wednesday and year-to-date accumulations in Santa Ana: Wednesday’s storm Santa Ana (as of 10 p.m.): 3.58 Anaheim: 1.15 Lake Forest: 0.76 Dana Point: 1.00 San Juan Capistrano: 1.50 Year-to-date Season: 5.83 Last year: 1.70 Normal: 4.00