Tiger, Boats Fall Victim to Storms

Casualties from winter storms that have raked San Diego in recent days included six catamarans tossed about by a possible waterspout and a rare Sumatran tiger that was killed by officials after it escaped from its Wild Animal Park enclosure.

Mission Bay Harbor Patrol officers said that six double-hulled craft, beached in Sail Bay at the foot of Fanuel Street, were scattered like matchsticks, apparently by high winds or possibly a waterspout that struck the area before dawn Sunday, a Harbor Patrol spokesman.

Wild Animal Park security officers said they had to shoot and kill the 3-year-old Sumatran tiger when the 285-pound cat escaped from its enclosure Saturday night through a crevice under a fence. The opening was formed by recent heavy rains. The tiger was spotted in a grove of trees near the park’s perimeter after the park had closed to the public for the night, a spokesman said. When attempts to tranquilize the tiger failed, a park security officer shot it.

In an announcement, officials said that the full-grown cat could have been a threat to visitors to the park and to residents of the surrounding area southeast of Escondido.

While skies cleared and rainfall diminished in most parts of the county, sewage contamination from several sources kept a 20-mile stretch of ocean and portions of Mission and San Diego bays quarantined Sunday.

Storm runoff from the Tijuana River, which empties into the Pacific on the U.S. side of the border, was estimated to peak at about 1 billion gallons daily, including 13 million gallons of raw sewage from Tijuana.

Fecal coliform counts, indicating sewage contamination from the Tijuana River, remained extremely high along the shores of Imperial Beach and north along the Silver Strand, said Roger Frauenfelder, San Diego’s deputy city manager. He said the city had no control over the spill, which began more than two weeks ago when Tijuana city officials closed the sewage plant serving the border city because storm waters were threatening to damage it.

Contamination from the Point Loma sewage plant outfall appears to be contained to a shore area immediately along the pipe and to Navy property to the north, Frauenfelder said. Coliform readings taken at Ocean Beach Pier were well under the danger level, he said, and may indicate that the area can be reopened for surfing and fishing by Tuesday “if the weather cooperates,” he said, adding that county health officers will make that decision.

Work on repairing the ruptured pipeline resumed at dawn Sunday after crews aboard a construction barge rode out Saturday’s wind and rains at the break site, about half a mile off the tip of Point Loma.

If the weather holds, crews may begin raising the three damaged sections of pipe, each 25 feet long, in order to take a look at their condition and to begin designing fittings for the replacements, Frauenfelder said.

“We have lost some workdays to the weather, but I am confident that we can meet our schedule to complete repairs by early in April,” he said.

Meanwhile, the pipe continues to spew about 180 million gallons a day of partially treated sewage into the ocean, about 3,500 feet offshore. Normally the sewage is carried into deep water, about 2.2 miles offshore.

Elsewhere, repairs to an overflowing sewage line were completed by city crews early Sunday, but much of the Mission Bay aquatic park remained off limits to water contact sports. Raw sewage flowed from an overloaded line through a manhole near Garnet Avenue and Soledad Mountain Road, then ran down streets to storm drains leading to Mission Bay.

Eastern and northern portions of the bay, from Sail Bay east to De Anza Cove and south to Fiesta Island, have been off limits for several days because of sewage-contaminated storm runoff, but the spill of more than 84,000 gallons was expected to make coliform counts skyrocket, according to Ruth Covill, a county Health Services Department spokeswoman.

The northern portion of San Diego Bay was posted with contamination warning signs Friday after testing by Navy ships showed high coliform counts. Covill said the contamination is probably due to urban runoff that flows into the bay through storm drains.

Weekend testing in the southern portion of San Diego Bay showed no spread of the pollution, Dan Avera, a county health services spokesman, said Sunday. He said the pollution danger is expected to dissipate as rain runoff subsides.

The weather appeared to be cooperating Sunday. National Weather Service forecasts called for little chance of heavy rains today after a day of spotty showers, which dropped .25 of an inch of rain over much of the county and 1.25 inches in the Poway area.

Mountain areas above 4,500 feet received about 6 inches of snow Saturday night, bringing crowds to the recreation areas along Sunrise Highway. Another inch or two may fall by today, forecasters said, but most of the heavy rain and snow amounts were expected in the northern parts of the state.