Job Has Phalts, But Pays Well : Pavers Welcome Break in Weather

The only thing Danny Tanner had to be thankful for Monday was that it wasn’t Sunday.

On Sunday, it was 99 degrees on El Toro Road. On Monday, as Orange County’s heat wave began to ebb, the temperature on El Toro Road had fallen to 92, still oppressive when you are where Tanner was--atop an asphalt-paving machine.

The Corona man and the rest of his crew were paving the new lanes of El Toro Road as they wound northeast into the hills. The heat rippled as it rose from the machine, which gobbled 300-degree asphalt that had been dumped onto the ground ahead and left behind a ribbon of smooth black road.

It’s a good job, Tanner said--”$21 an hour”--but he wasn’t so sure it paid well enough for hot weather like this.

“It’s too hot to work,” interjected Joe Silva of Orange. “He sits on his butt up there on that machine. We’re the ones behind the machine.”

Silva and others on the crew spend their day walking on the freshly laid pavement, cleaning up what the machine has left imperfect. They follow right behind the machine, where the pavement has cooled to a mere 280 degrees.

“We’d use insulated shoes, but we can’t afford them,” Silva said. “Tell Reagan we want a raise.”

Are there worse assignments during a heat wave? The firefighters who Monday were mopping up a 25-acre brush fire on the extremely steep slopes of uninhabited Modjeska Canyon have opinions about that.

On Sunday, when the fire broke out, it was 108 degrees in that part of the canyon, according to the National Forest Service.

“There may be a worse job, but I haven’t experienced it,” said Battalion Chief Bob Moore of the Orange County Fire Department.

Chris Nicks of Costa Mesa thinks he can top that. He works in a restaurant kitchen on Balboa Island, “and I swear it’s 150 in there on a day like Sunday.”

But at quitting time, he puts on his sweater and jacket and goes to his other job--service supervisor at the Ice Capades Chalet skating rink in Costa Mesa, where life is always 40 degrees or so.

On Monday, as Tanner was sticky with sweat on El Toro Road, Nicks was beside a concrete pit shoveling ground-up ice from the rink’s Zamboni ice-making machine. It looked like real snow. The clouds from Nick’s breath looked real, too.

“You really have to adjust to this,” Nicks said. “People look at me outside, at my heavy sweater and jacket, and think I’m crazy. But it’s about a 50-degree difference in here.”

“This is warm for this place,” said Annette Hicks of Costa Mesa, one of the rink’s skating instructors.

Hicks works six days a week at the rink, every day but Sunday, which was the peak of the heat wave. She said it was a relief to get back to work, even if she had to wear a parka.

“I had to tell the cleaners I needed the parka by 1 p.m. today (Monday), that I really had to have it. They look at you kind of funny,” she said.

Nicks stirred the clumps of ice under the shower nozzles to hasten the melting. It’s not one of his favorite duties, but he must at least be glad to be out of the heat.

“Actually, I’d rather be outside today--definitely,” Nicks said. “I wouldn’t mind sitting on the beach.”

Had Nicks gone to the beach, he would have been one of relatively few. Shortly after noon, onshore breezes brought a blanket of fog to the beach. In Huntington Beach, the high was a mere 75, and crowds were sparse.

According to National Weather Service reporting stations in Orange County, Monday’s high was 99 degrees posted in Santa Ana. That was 6 degrees shy of the record for Oct. 5, set in 1953 in Anaheim. The mercury hit 92 degrees in El Toro, up from a warm overnight low of 69 degrees, and San Juan Capistrano had a high of 83 degrees, up from a low of 58.

WeatherData, which provides forecasts to The Times, predicted that the cooling trend would continue, with Orange County highs today falling into the high 80s. Easterly winds both at the surface and at upper levels are dying out, allowing onshore winds to bring cooling ocean air onto the Southland.