A Rain Check Would Be Nice : The Drought Notwithstanding, These Families Are Tired of Getting Soaked

In San Gabriel and Pasadena, Bob Griffin and Hector Castillo were eyeing the puffy white rain clouds Tuesday and saying, “Give us more.”

In Compton and Redondo Beach, Barbara Johnson, Mona Campbell and Ellen Sanford were eyeing the same sky, but demanding, “Give us a break.”

This year’s surprising rainy season was on everyone’s mind as the Los Angeles Basin forgot, for a moment, about the lingering drought and took a deep breath between welcome storms.

But talk of drought would have sounded good to Johnson, whose small Compton home was damaged when Tuesday morning’s storm struck with a vengeance, ripping the roof off two rooms.

The rain soaked a piano, computer, stereo equipment, books and family mementos when freak winds tossed the rooms’ metal roof over the house next door and deposited it across Santa Rita Street on neighbor Mona Campbell’s front lawn.

After sunrise, as Johnson struggled to cover her soggy belongings with sheets of plastic, the walls of her 14-year-old back-yard house addition collapsed around her.

“We’ve lived here 20 years and never seen a storm like this,” Johnson said. “I don’t think I can take another storm like this. I don’t have room to move everything inside.”

Across the street, Campbell was waiting for power company repair crews to arrive. Johnson’s roof had sailed through electric lines shortly after 2 a.m., slicing them and dropping them across Campbell’s 1986 Ford Escort, which was parked in her driveway.

“I guess we’ll be eating by candlelight tonight,” she said. “We’ll have a lot to eat: Everything in my deep freeze is defrosting.”

Redondo Beach resident Sanford was not going anywhere either. Her 1982 Toyota and 1986 Mercury were trapped underwater in the flooded garage at her new townhouse on Irena Avenue.

So were family heirlooms--including irreplaceable photographs dating back to Civil War days, antiques and keepsakes belonging to Sanford’s three children that were in a downstairs family room when surging floodwaters inundated the subterranean garage-family room.

“The water was two feet over the tops of the cars,” she said. “We can’t even get in to see how bad the damage is.”

Sanford and her husband, Mark, moved into the new half-million-dollar townhouse two weeks ago. The damaged antiques and heirlooms were still where they had been stacked after being unloaded from the moving van.

The water poured onto Irena Avenue from nearby streets “just like somebody had opened seven or eight fire hydrants,” Ellen Sanford said. “The neighbors were all outside taking pictures of each other standing hip-deep in the street.

“They say it’s going to rain again tonight. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Down the street, builder Troy Haskell was struggling to get rid of nine feet of water that collected in the subterranean garages of four condominiums he has nearly completed.

“The city inspector came by and hinted we might have structural damage,” Haskell shrugged. “We might have to tear it down and start from scratch.”

That thought sent shudders through him, Haskell said, because it could cost $1 million.

The aftermath of Tuesday’s storm--the crystal-clear air, spectacular clouds and sun-drenched snow on mountains north and east of Los Angeles--was sending shivers of delight through others, however.

“This is wonderful. Everything’s fresh and clean. If we could have one storm like this every week for the next four months we could get out of this mess we’re in,” said auto parts manager Griffin as he waited in line at a San Gabriel Boulevard taco stand.

Along Grand Oaks Avenue in Pasadena, gardener Castillo was spreading green fertilizer pellets on a brown-fringed front lawn as he stopped to admire the snow and low-lying clouds near the summit of nearby Mt. Wilson.

“We’re going to get rain tonight, which is good for this lawn. The view is good and the weather is good,” said Castillo, who lives in Apple Valley. “For me, it couldn’t be much better--unless I won the lottery.”