BAY AREA QUAKE : Quake Dealt Costly Blow to Major Agricultural Region

Mountains of cans and drums filled with 400,000 tons of the summer tomato harvest came tumbling down when Tuesday’s quake struck Hollister in San Benito County, knocking out the corrugated steel walls of many of the town’s 14 warehouses.

In Watsonville, the frozen food processing capital of the country, an ammonia leak at the Green Giant plant could cause $20 million in losses to frozen Brussels sprouts, broccoli and other vegetables; six other processing plants there were also damaged.

And in the tiny town of Freedom, just north of Watsonville, the earth’s sudden quiver Tuesday knocked down thousands of pounds of apples stacked in bins, burying a partner in the H. A. Rider & Sons cider processing company. Tom Rider remains hospitalized from his injuries and the company rehired about 40 laid-off workers to help with the cleanup.

These are but some examples of the still mounting losses to homes, farms and livelihoods that were still being tallied Friday in the aftermath of the devastating quake, the epicenter of which was just to the north of the rich agricultural area of Monterey, San Benito, Santa Cruz and southern Santa Clara counties.

Farmers and food processors ship billions of dollars of fruit and vegetables, providing much of the area’s employment. At the height of the growing season, the countryside looks like an uninterrupted carpet of green all the way to the horizon. Monterey County farmers last year, for example, earned about $1.1 billion, making it the fourth-richest agricultural county in the nation.

Winter-harvested vegetables still in the fields suffered little damage in the quake, farmers and processors said, even though power failures caused an interruption in irrigation in some areas and temperatures soared Thursday to unseasonable levels. Damage to large food processors, such as Green Giant, and blocked roads could delay getting vegetables to market and cause as-yet unknown losses. One estimate for Santa Cruz County put the loss at between $5 million and $6 million.

The main losses were to fruits and vegetables stored in warehouses that were damaged, although apples knocked from trees by the quake could also result in losses. Also hit were many of the inexpensive houses occupied by the area’s 5,000 field workers.

“The problem is a lot of them lost their homes, and they haven’t reported back to work,” said Ronald Tyler, director of the UC Agricultural Extension Service for Santa Cruz County.

Workers whose homes were damaged or destroyed have been camping out in their front yards, on the high school football fields and elsewhere around Watsonville and the prospects for rebuilding the housing seems bleak, observers said.

“We don’t have low-income housing in Watsonville,” said Jose Villasana, a Santa Cruz County mental health worker. “And now the problem is going to get worse. We’re just waiting for word on what to tell people. But even if the city wanted to help, the bottom line is there is no low-income housing.”

P. J. Mecozzi, president of Del Mar Foods, a medium-size food processor in Watsonville, said many of his 400 workers have spent the past few days at shelters and parks and other open places. “We’ve had a hard time getting our crews back to work because they have been displaced from their homes,” he said.

Del Mar Foods resumed operations Thursday after electric power was restored. The stored food was undamaged because it stayed cool despite the disruption, but the cleanup and the lack of workers could delay frozen food deliveries across the country, he said.

About $1 million worth of food was lost when cases of food tumbled to the floor from stacked pallets and broke open. He said his losses--representing about 10% of what he had stored--were about average for warehouses in the area.

Processors from Santa Cruz to Salinas said they suffered minor losses as a result of the disruption in electricity on Wednesday. Some areas remained without power on Friday. Damage was reported as far south as the southern Monterey County town of Gonzales, where the quake ruptured tanks at the Monterey Vineyard and 20,000 gallons of wine leaked out.

“The loss will be in the millions,” said Steve Arnoldy, 39, director of operations for San Benito Foods, which owns six tomato warehouses in Hollister. “Some of our buildings we can’t even get into. It’s a miracle there was no one in the warehouses.”

In Castroville, which last year harvested 34,200 tons of artichokes and considers itself the artichoke center of the world, the quake resulted in few losses, although power failures forced growers to suspend the current harvest for a day, Monterey County agriculture officials said.

Continuing problems with power supplies prompted the local utility to ask Artichoke Industries Inc., the nation’s main cannery and processor of artichokes, to scale back its use of power.

“We’ve cut back just about as far as we can go without quitting,” said John Podio, the plant manager. Lights, unused conveyors and motors, and even the office copier have been shut off, he said. “They asked us twice yesterday, and we just shut down. Today, we’ve got a minimum crew, but it looks like we’re going to make it,” he said.