Storm Losses Pass $13 Million : Disaster: The estimate covers county roads and agriculture but not damage to about 1,000 homes.

Last week’s storms and flash floods caused more than $13 million in damage to Ventura County roads, facilities and agriculture, county public works and agriculture officials estimated Tuesday.

Losses to about 1,000 homes, most of which were not insured for flood damage, have not yet been assessed, county disaster assistance authorities said. Only a small number of homeowners in the county have flood insurance, said Karen Guidi, assistant director of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services.

“Hopefully, we will be able to get a presidential disaster declaration that will make a half dozen disaster assistance programs available,” she said.

Guidi said the county will learn today whether President Bush has agreed to declare it a federal disaster area.

Gov. Pete Wilson declared the county a state disaster area Feb. 12, the day that heavy rainfall caused flash floods and a mudslide that killed three people, including a couple and their unborn child in their home north of Ventura.

The storm sent the Ventura River raging over its banks, flooding dozens of motor homes and trailers in the Ventura Beach RV Resort that sits at the mouth of the river.

The floods followed nearly a week of rain and an intense overnight storm that sent the Ventura River raging at runoff levels equal to those of the devastating 1969 floods, which washed out the Ventura Harbor.

Arthur Goulet, director of Ventura County public works, said the county’s roads, storm drains and flood channels sustained nearly $8 million in damage during the storms. That figure will probably continue to rise as more damage assessments are made in the coming weeks, he said.

“It’s difficult to estimate damage because a lot of places are still covered with mud and water,” he said.

Earl McPhail, county agricultural commissioner, estimated that area growers suffered $5.3 million in crop damage, with celery growers bearing the largest portion of the loss.

He estimated damage to celery farming at $1.69 million, with strawberry farming close behind at $1.5 million. Flower growers, whose Valentine’s Day season was in full swing when their fields were flooded, suffered about $500,000 in losses.

“It couldn’t have happened at a worse time of year for the economics on the Oxnard Plain,” McPhail said.

He said the vegetable industry, which sustained $2.45 million in losses altogether, was already in the doldrums because prices had been low before the flooding. Strawberry prices were declining as well.

“It’s kind of like the General Motors worker who gets laid off and gets a ticket on the way home,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.

But he said that most growers are taking the losses in stride.

“The attitude of most of the growers is that they shrug their shoulders and say, ‘That’s farming,’ ” Laird said. “It’s part of the risk factor when they planted the crop.”

George Boskovich, whose Boskovich Farms Inc. cultivates 6,000 acres on the Oxnard Plain, said that 50 to 60 acres of cultivated land was underwater after the storms.

“It’s a risk any time you decide to farm in and around a potential hazard,” he said. “It’s just that we’ve gotten away from worrying about it because of the last six years of drought.”

Most of the losses occurred when Calleguas Creek, which collects water from an area that reaches from Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks to Camarillo, overflowed its banks near Camarillo State Hospital, McPhail said.

The portion of the creek that overflowed has been the subject of studies for years. The Ventura County Flood Control District and landowners in the area have contended that the federal Army Corps of Engineers should reinforce the levees of the creek. But corps policy has been not to build flood control projects to protect agriculture, officials said.

“A lot of the loss would have been avoided if there hadn’t been flooding from the creek, there is no question,” McPhail said. “I’m sure that the Army corps will shoulder a majority of the blame for the losses.”

The losses, though large for the 15 to 20 growers who sustained most of the damage, amount to less than 2% of the annual value of the crops and a fraction of the county’s annual agricultural revenue of $853 million in 1990, McPhail said.

Flood Damage to Ventura County Agriculture

Broccoli: $165,000

Cabbage: $61,000

Cauliflower: $44,000

Celery: $1,689,000

Lettuce: $491,000

Total Vegetables: $2,450,000

Strawberries: $1,500,000

Cut flowers: $500,000

Nursery stock: $500,000

Sod farms: $350,000

TOTAL: $5,300,000