COUNTYWIDE : Farmers, Roofing Crews Hustle Under Threatening Skies

Up and down the county Friday, workers labored quickly to clear roadside drainage and flood-control channels. Field hands hurriedly harvested crops that needed picking days ago. Contractors busily hammered on new shingles and patched leaky roofs.

All during the bustle, workers gazed up expectantly at the gray sky. They knew they had to make the most of their time, taking advantage of the brief lull between storms to catch up on work hindered by three days of heavy rain.

The torrential downpour, weather forecasters warn, is returning full force today.

While this week’s storm, which dumped up to four inches of rain around parts of the county, has been a nuisance, it has caused no major damage countywide, authorities said. It has, however, kept county workers toiling around the clock to clear obstacles from roads and debris from drainages.

But not all roads were cleared on Friday. Parts of Laguna Canyon Road are flooded. Southbound lanes are now open, but northbound lanes, which are closed from El Toro Road to the San Diego Freeway, are expected to remain closed “until further notice,” CHP Officer Bill Wedderburn said.

Afternoon showers also contributed to an accident involving a big rig truck on the southbound Costa Mesa Freeway on Friday afternoon.

The rig jackknifed then crashed through a freeway perimeter fence just north of Dyer Street. No other vehicles were involved in the accident which occurred at 3:50 p.m, Wedderburn said.

Friday, workers from the Orange County Storm Center trudged through canyon areas susceptible to flooding but found few problems, said Tom Connelie, manager of maintenance system.

There had been minor rock and mudslides in some places, he said, but otherwise “we’ve been working hard and putting overtime in routine cleanups and that’s about it.”

Crews are also getting ready for a possible onslaught from the storm predicted to hit this afternoon.

The new storm, coming from the eastern Pacific, is expected to bring at least three more inches of rain today and into the middle of next week, said Steve Burback, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

“It could be heavy at times (tonight) and Sunday, and it won’t taper off until early Monday,” Burback said. “But, another storm is due in around Tuesday.”

That storm will probably be followed by yet another one Wednesday, he added.

While weary about the promise of more rain, farmers were too busy working Friday to ponder about it. Instead, they worked at a breakneck speed in the strawberry fields to harvest the fruit. Since Tuesday, harvesting has been sporadic because the downpours kept workers away from the flooded fields.

“We want to get a lot done today because I understand there’s going to be more rain over the weekend,” said Matt Kawamura, vice president of Western Marketing, a produce farm in Irvine. “So far, the rain hasn’t hurt our celeries and cabbages, but it has damaged some of our strawberries.”

Those strawberries damaged by the precipitation, Kawamura said, will be sold to companies that process them into juice or preserves.

Officials at Treasure Farms in Irvine said their major crops, avocados and lemons, have fared well during the rain, although they, too, were not harvested until Friday.

“No crop has been hurt because the rain has been gentler than we expected,” said orchard manager Alan Reynolds. “But, if it continues for many more days, it can be a problem as far as causing some rotting. That hasn’t happened yet.”

As far as roofers are concerned, the rain could continue as long as it wants. Since early this week, companies have been deluged with hundreds of calls from distraught home and business owners wanting to repair leaking roofs.

“We had so many calls we couldn’t answer all, and of course, we couldn’t get to most of them during the rain,” said Mark Evans, owner of Evans Roofing in Santa Ana. “Our biggest problem is that people assume when they make that call during heavy rain that (roofers) are like plumbers--we can get there any time.”

But Evans and other roofers are not complaining. “There’s no recession this week as far as roofing is concerned,” Evans said. “Sales are up probably by 500%.”