Nature Turns Down the Thermostat : Icy Breezes Harsh on Nurseries, the Homeless

Earl Scott, 61, pulled his thin jacket closer to his chest and shivered.

“Yeah, it’s a bit cold,” Scott said in Costa Mesa on Friday. “It’s just one of those days you want nothing but a warm bowl of soup.”

The unusually cold weather that has gripped Southern California caused temperatures in Orange County to drop into the low 30s Thursday and Friday nights, posing problems for nursery owners, strawberry growers and the homeless.

In Yorba Linda, several homeless people who have been camping in Featherly Regionial Park said that living outdoors in the cold has been difficult.

With no money for an apartment, Chris and Shirley Parkins have lived out of their van and station wagon in the park for four days. Friday, they huddled in the wind and said that everything had been fine until the cold hit.

“Last night it was so cold we couldn’t sleep,” said Chris Parkins, 27, who said he was a candy salesman. “We tried holding each other and wrapping all our clothes over us. But it was still pretty bad.”

Hugging her husband, Shirley Parkins shook her head as she looked at their van. “We’re just hopeful right now,” she said. “We’ve been camping out and saving money day by day. I hope it just gets a little warmer, that’s all.”

Nearby were Gary Martin, 17, and Paul Shone, 33, in a tent patched with electrical tape and plastic bags and filled with blankets and sleeping bags--and a propane stove.

Tending the Stove at Night

“We are pretty much used to the cold,” said Martin, a Dayton, Ohio, native who was nursing a case of the sniffles. “But I could hear the wind blowing hard last night. At least the stove keeps us warm.”

To guard against fire, one of them stays awake while the stove is on.

Most shelters for the homeless are filled at this time of the year, said Bob Wilson, an administrator at Orange County Rescue Mission in Santa Ana. The shelter’s 54 beds, filled on a first-come, first-served basis, were full Thursday night, and 25 men slept in the lobby, Wilson said.

“We hear our people saying they have been sleeping in cars and parks. But they can’t do that now,” Wilson said.

Earl Scott, who could not find room in the Rescue Mission’s lobby, said he walked several miles until he found a sofa left in the parking lot of a Costa Mesa shopping center. And that’s where he slept Thursday night.

“It was a good night for me,” said Scott, who arrived in California three weeks ago to look for work as a laborer. “Somebody gave me a blanket, and I hid deep into the sofa. Nobody bothered me. I guess it was too cold for anybody to be out.”

Scott, who has emphysema, said that living outdoors in California has been much warmer than in other states he has visited. But he admitted that he would prefer an even warmer place to stay.

“Some people don’t mind the cold and like to sleep outside,” Scott said. “But if I can get a warm place and a shower, I would live there.”

The cold is causing health problems as well as discomfort for the homeless, said Denise Berg, director of emergency assistance at Lutheran Social Services of Southern California.

“The babies have runny noses. Many of them need medical attention, but they can’t afford it,” Berg said. “There’s people out there who are freezing, and they don’t have any place to stay.”

The cold snap also brought financial misery for some Orange County nursery owners, who now are trying to salvage damaged plants.

Despite preparing for the bad weather, Norm Vanginken, owner of Loma Vista Nursery in Fullerton, estimated that he lost about $10,000 to $20,000 when his tropical plants were damaged Thursday night. Vanginken and his night crew had tried to insulate the plants with plastic covers. They also sprayed them with chemicals to keep them warm and turned on the sprinklers to heighten the humidity.

Foliage Turns Brown

“Many of them wilted and their foliage turned brown so they are unsellable,” Vanginken said. “It will take at least six months until they can grow the leaves back.”

Neal Fulton, a salesman at Anaheim Wholesale Nursery, said he does not know how much his nursery has lost. But he and fellow workers have been moving plants to warmer spots and covering them in case low temperatures persist, as is expected.

“We even got a helicopter above the plants to circulate the air,” Fulton said.

The cold weather posed a threat to Orange County’s $62-million strawberry industry. John Ellis, deputy county agricultural commissioner, noted that strawberries are particularly sensitive to the cold.

“Plants will survive,” Ellis said. “You can find wild strawberries throughout cold climates, but production will be low. If temperatures continue to stay this low, there will be damage to the crops and a decrease in production.”

Right now, growers are harvesting strawberries only every few days, Ellis said. Full-scale harvesting will not begin until February.