O.C. Gets Reprieve After Storm

Mother Nature offered Orange County a reprieve Sunday, giving residents time to mop up after the El Nino-related downpour that dumped more than 7 inches of rain in some areas, causing widespread flooding, mudslides and road closures.

Today’s morning commute could be complicated by road closures still in effect as of late Sunday for parts of Laguna Canyon Road between Irvine and Laguna Beach.

But no more rain is expected, and weather forecasters late Sunday were predicting a drying trend likely to continue at least until Wednesday.

On Sunday, residents in flood-stricken areas struggled to return to normal, though dozens could not go back to their water-damaged homes.

A harried Laurie Dixon packed up a few necessities before temporarily evacuating her Silverado Canyon home, where mudslides Saturday had filled her garage 5 feet deep in some spots.

“We’re just trying to pick up a few things before we get out of here for a little bit, until this mess is all over,” she said Sunday.

A few Huntington Beach residents who had been evacuated by boat said they were glad to find their mobile homes still standing. And Laguna Beach store owners who were shoveling and sweeping mud and muck also gave thanks that the damage was not worse in the wake of one of the most powerful storms to hit the county.

For many who had dismissed El Nino as an exaggerated threat, the storm gave a clue about what might be ahead as the rainy season begins in earnest.

“This was the first storm of the season, and it’s probably just going to get a lot worse,” Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Dan Young said.

At nightfall Saturday, 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, officials said.

The weekend storm that began Friday night, peaked Saturday and continued with lighter showers on Sunday pummeled inland areas including Lake Forest and Silverado Canyon and the coastline from Huntington Beach to Newport Bay to Laguna Beach.

Laguna Canyon Road between El Toro Road and the San Diego Freeway was closed. And flooding forced the shutdown of some freeway lanes in the Irvine-Laguna Beach area.

As of late Sunday, the California Highway Patrol said, the far right lane on the northbound Santa Ana Freeway at the Laguna Freeway was closed. Also, the No. 4 lane on the southbound Santa Ana Freeway was shut down between Sand Canyon Avenue and Alton Parkway. The CHP did not know when the lanes will reopen.

Damage had yet to be totaled but was expected to be surprisingly light, especially given the severity of the short-lived storm, emergency officials said.

Remarkably, there were no reports of injuries or drownings, despite several unconfirmed reports of adults and children being swept away by churning waters, officials said.

A low tide and ongoing efforts to keep storm drainage channels cleared helped minimize damage, said Peter Dalquist, engineer with the county’s Public Facilities and Resources Department.

“It could have been worse,” Dalquist said. “We were very lucky.”

Most of the residents of the Del Mar Mobile Estates, who were evacuated amid rising water levels, inspected the damage Sunday.

One day earlier, roads in the park had been 3-foot-deep rivers that tore stairs away from front doors, ruined parked cars and seeped into homes in lower-elevation areas.

Under drizzly skies Sunday, the streets were drained but still slick with gooey mud. Outside a few homes, rugs and carpet pads were hanging out to dry. The homes that suffered the worst damage remained wet and empty, but residents who saw the water stop at their doorsteps were settling back in.

Jack Brokhart was hosing the mud off his driveway after his wife, Jean, spent the afternoon scrubbing the flood residue from the sides of their mobile home.

While their home, sitting on a raised pad, bore no damage inside, their 1997 Toyota Corolla appeared ruined and had to be towed away. Christmas keepsakes and other items in their storage shed, sitting on the ground, likewise were probably soaked, said Jean Brokhart, who plans to tackle that task in a couple of days. “I can’t face it yet.”

The Brokharts are a bit nervous about facing the rest of the rainy season but have nowhere else to go. As added protection, though, they are going to rent storage space away from the mobile home park to stash their special books and other valuables, they said.

About a dozen of the mobile homes were severely water damaged, but the rest of the 142 homes were in good condition, manager Pat Brown said.

Forty-nine residents, many of whom are elderly, spent the night at a Red Cross emergency shelter set up at a local school. From late Friday through Saturday, the Red Cross served 525 warm meals to the flood victims, officials said.

“People are doing much better than yesterday,” Brown said, looking up at the sky. “It’s clearing up and you can see blue skies now.”

Laguna Beach, where nearly 8 inches of rain fell over the weekend, was perhaps the area hardest hit.

On Sunday, weary cleanup crews joined residents and merchants using shovels, wheelbarrows and other tools to scoop up layers of earth.

“We got our butts kicked yesterday,” said Laguna Beach public works employee Kevin Rettmier, who at one point Saturday morning was riding a tractor and trying to clear debris in 4 feet of raging water at Laguna Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway. “It was a scary situation.”

On Sunday, sections of Laguna Canyon Road were still closed because of mudslides and water from swollen reservoirs and irrigation ponds spilling onto the road. Residents without trucks were forced to take Pacific Coast Highway or El Toro Road into the beach-side city.

In some areas along the canyon road, coots paddled across water standing 6 inches deep and the cries of blackbirds replaced the usual drone of traffic.

Portions of Pacific Coast Highway also remained closed late Sunday because of mudslides and flooding, including the section north of Superior Avenue in Newport Beach and at Warner Avenue and Golden West Street in Huntington Beach.

Two southbound Santa Ana Freeway exits--Alton Parkway and Sand Canyon Avenue--were also closed due to flooding.

Still, fire officials said there was much to be happy about.

“I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of what occurred, but the good news is that we did not lose anybody,” Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Scott Brown said. He added that Fire Authority crews had responded to several hundred emergency calls Saturday.

For the many Laguna Beach merchants who found their stores slathered in mud, the storm erased two days of holiday business.

But amid the cleaning crews, many residents and tourists were out Sunday to walk their dogs, get a look at ground zero of the weekend’s storm or eat brunch on patios of downtown bistros.

A small section of the boardwalk at Main Beach was closed due to erosion, which left a sand cliff between the boardwalk and the street--and drew many gawkers.

Residents and merchants at several homes and businesses at the south end of Laguna Canyon Road struggled in the storm’s aftermath, including Laguna Koi Ponds, a shop about 1 1/2 miles from downtown.

There, Greg Zuccolotto’s business was inundated with a sea of mud. Worse, the mud and water burned out the pumps that feed oxygen into the koi ponds, threatening many of his 1,500 fish.

Zuccolotto had a small temporary pump working, but it could oxygenate only about a fourth of the tanks at a time. So he and others were rotating the pumps to keep the exotic fish alive until a new system could be installed.

Still, Zuccolotto and other Laguna Beach residents appeared resilient, rebounding from the natural disaster.

“What else can we do?” Zuccolotto said. “After the [1993] fires it was bad. We had a lot of mud then. Now we have mud and water.”

Along the coast, several area beaches including Monarch Bay and Newport Bay were closed Sunday because of debris. In Newport Bay, dozens of boats along the Rhine Channel were stuck in waters so heavily littered with wood and rubbish that they were unnavigable, officials said.

The water was so clogged that birds easily crossed the surface.

Saturday’s downpour is an example of what to expect in the coming months, the Fire Authority’s Brown said.

“It should serve as a good reminder that we are in for a wet winter,” he said. “Hopefully, people are taking some time this morning to check those gutters and check those problems.”

Many residents seemed to be taking seriously the advice to get prepared.

Sandbags were a hot commodity at many hardware stores, and several Fire Authority stations reported their supplies running low. Residents were limited to 30 sandbags each, Brown said.

Times staff writer Marcida Dodson and correspondent Lisa Addison contributed to this report.