Officials Contributed to Sepulveda Basin Confusion : Delays: Motorists were trapped by rapidly rising waters after a series of communication breakdowns.

A series of breakdowns that included badly flawed weather forecasts, delays in contacting emergency workers and confusion among city officials over closing streets resulted in dozens of motorists being trapped in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area earlier this week.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the basin and runs the dam, said Wednesday that it did not immediately realize how serious the flood threat was because its workers were inexperienced, its rain gauges were improperly monitored and it received grossly inaccurate forecasts from the National Weather Service and a private meteorologist under contract to the Army.

As a result, Army officials did not notify Los Angeles police and other local agencies to close streets in the basin until about 12:30 p.m. Monday--when drivers terrified by rising floodwaters were already seeking refuge atop cars and in trees.

Meanwhile, city officials expressed confusion about who has primary responsibility for shutting the long metal gates that keep motorists off streets running through the massive dam basin.

One Corps of Engineers official said that when the Corps telephoned the Police Department to warn of the flooding, a police employee responded: “Well, what am I supposed to do?”’

Dave Royer, principal traffic engineer with the Los Angeles Transportation Department, said he knows of “no procedure directly that is set up for closure of the roads.”

Corps officials have insisted that they followed their procedures Monday to alert the city, but have also suggested that, in light of what happened, the procedures need improving.

Dennis Marfice, chief of hydrologic engineering for the Los Angeles District of the Corps of Engineers, said the Corps reacted sluggishly in notifying city disaster workers in part because some Corps workers on duty in its downtown offices that day had never experienced a flood like the one that poured into the Sepulveda Basin on Monday.

Marfice said Corps employees did not understand the significance of pre-flood danger signs such as unusually heavy rainfall, a fast rise in the water level behind the dam and huge outflows from the dam into the Los Angeles River.

“Somebody that’s not experienced with that kind of chain of events won’t necessarily know what’s going on,” he said.

Marfice added that workers at Corps headquarters “weren’t looking that closely” at automated readouts from rain gauges at the dam and elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley and that a private meteorologist in Oxnard gave them inaccurate weather forecasts.

He said the Corps got similarly flawed forecasts and late flash flood warnings from the National Weather Service. The Corps could have notified local disaster officials earlier if it had better weather reports, he said.

Todd Morris, deputy meteorologist in charge of forecasting for the Weather Service’s Southern California office, said his agency was predicting significant rain Monday and advised local officials of that at 9:30 a.m.

But the prediction seriously underestimated the amount, he said, with forecasters saying a maximum of two to three inches was expected when more than six inches actually fell on Woodland Hills, upstream from the dam, by Monday afternoon.

As a result, the first flash flood warning issued by the service came at 1:30 p.m.--and only after Morris had seen dramatic helicopter rescues from the basin on television. “If we knew we were going to get that much rain, we obviously would have done something earlier,” he said.

The Weather Service bases its flash-flood warnings, he said, on rainfall predictions, satellite data, ground conditions, information from local flood control agencies and call-ins from volunteer weather spotters.

But on Monday, Morris said, the Weather Service called Los Angeles County flood control officials and asked if they were expecting any flooding on the basis of the forecast of two to three inches. County officials said no, he said.

Morris said the Weather Service was also hampered somewhat because it was able to reach only one of its 50 to 70 volunteer weather spotters in the Valley who check rainfall.

“We called several of them, but we were only able to reach one in Woodland Hills,” he said. “But by the time we got hold of that person, it was the same time we saw it (flooding) on the news.”

Morris said that although weather officials called county flood control officials to see if they were experiencing problems, they did not call the Army Corps, whose dam keeper could see water levels rising rapidly, and called police on his own at 12:30 p.m.--the first word from the Corps to city officials.

Army Corps officials said that shortly after that call, Corps workers called at least four other local agencies to warn that floodwaters were inundating streets in the basin.

A police spokeswoman in Van Nuys had said Tuesday that police did not get the call until 1:30 p.m.--a one-hour difference at a time when the water was rising rapidly. On Wednesday however, Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker acknowledged that the call was received at 12:30. He said officers had blocked access to inundated streets by 1 p.m.

Kroeker said he was unaware of any confusion on the part of the police employee who got the Corps’ first call, but said the department would look into the matter. He added that even if there was some initial confusion, “it didn’t appear to delay anything we did.”

Fire Department Battalion Chief Dean Cathey said his department--which dispatched the rescue helicopters--was first contacted by a motorist on Balboa Boulevard who called on a cellular phone. The second call came from another motorist with a cellular phone, who was already trapped, Cathey said.

Although police said they led efforts to close the road gates, city officials could not agree on who was actually responsible for deciding to take such action.

A police spokeswoman, for instance, said that the Parks and Recreation Department was supposed to make that call. Parks spokesman Al Goldfarb, however, said it was up to the city Transportation Department.

Royer, of the Transportation Department, said it was the responsibility of the city Public Works Department. A DPW spokesman, Bob Hayes, said it was up to the police.

Joe Evelyn, the Corps’ chief of hydrology and hydraulics, said the city should develop a central notification point so Army officials do not have to call so many different departments.

He also suggested that the city close down roads in the area at the first sign of heavy rain. The risk of loss of life if a flood materializes outweighs the inconvenience to drivers if the closure proves to be unnecessary, he said.

Lt. Col Kenneth Steele of the Corps said that because development in the Valley is changing the basin’s hydraulic characteristics, flooding may first occur in creeks and flood control channels upstream from the dam, impeding the dam keeper’s ability to judge whether a flood is gathering out of sight and issue flood warnings.

Steele said that if new studies show flooding began in channels leading to the dam the Corps will consider such measures as modifying them to handle greater amounts of water.

Dick Ginevan, a city Department of Parks and Recreation official who supervises three city-owned golf courses in the basin, said his agency was notified by the Corps at 12:20 p.m. But by that time, he said, the water level was so high on streets that he could not reach the maintenance area in his station wagon to save equipment stored there.

He said parks employees were able to move most of their turf-grooming equipment to dry ground, but three vehicles were flooded. He also said that up to $22,000 worth of electronic circuit boards that run automated irrigation systems, which could have been removed with timely warning, were submerged and may be ruined.

“I talked to one of my golf supervisors, and he said he has always gotten more notification than we got this time” from the Corps, Ginevan said.

Times staff writer Amy Pyle contributed to this story.