Snow Day for L.A. Schoolchildren

In many American cities, local politicians spend the winter months helping clear away snow. But Southern California is different. Here, elected officials, sometimes using taxpayer money, bring the white stuff in.

Man-made snow has already come to Pacoima, Long Beach, downtown Los Angeles and many places in between this year. (A version of the stuff -- hail -- fell for free in Watts last month, but cost a bundle to clean up.) And in the coming weeks, it is scheduled for several other locales, including a patch in Exposition Park where a representative from Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn’s office is expected to frolic today.

“We want to bring winter to the people,” said Vincent Torres, recreation director for Paramount, where officials will spend about $10,000 to bring in 100 tons of snow Saturday.

Officials at ice companies that provide man-made snow say the practice is becoming increasingly popular in Southern California cities.

Jim Mueller, owner of the Iceman, an ice supply store in Bellflower that has created winter wonderlands from La Verne to Buena Park, said his company has had to turn away business this year; he plans to buy more machines next year.

The machines, which originally were used to spray shaved ice on produce to keep it cool on its way from the fields of the Central Valley to the markets of the Midwest, have found new life in an era of refrigerated trucks making snow on demand.

“Snow” is shaved from 300-pound blocks of ice that are trucked to a site then sprayed through an 8-inch-diameter hose. “We can pretty much place snow wherever you need it,” Mueller said.

Of course, it’s not just warm climates where snow is made. Even the city of New York, reeling this week from the effects of a major northeaster, fabricates it on occasion when nature doesn’t oblige.

But in Southern California, some elected officials say they are providing the only snow some children have ever seen.

Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes paid $2,500 from his council district’s discretionary fund to truck 15 tons of snow to Elysian Park on Monday for local children to play in, and declared it well worth the expense.

As a child growing up in Northeast Los Angeles, he said, he remembered “looking at pictures of snow and not knowing what snow really felt like.”

“It brings happiness,” he added, standing at the top of a short toboggan run and helping wide-eyed children settle onto sleds.

Eva Mungaray Gutierrez, an aide at Hillside Elementary School in Lincoln Heights who accompanied a busload of children to the park to see the snow, said one of her charges called it “the happiest day of his life.”

Other children, however, were less than thrilled.

Caroline Garcia, a student at Aldama Elementary School in Highland Park, stood nursing a cut on her face after being hit with a snowball.

The winter wonderland at Elysian Park included a jaunty snowman. But this year, Frosty was provided by the ice company.

Last time, Reyes and his staff tried to make their own, but it turned into a disaster because none of the Southern Californians knew how to build one, said Reyes spokesman Tony Perez.

“We don’t have a lot of experience with the snow,” said Perez, who added that he has never actually seen it fall from the sky.