After the Deluge, Roofers Swamped With Jobs : Weather: The drought meant some dry years for roofing companies. Now they’re showered with calls as panicky homeowners ask for emergency repairs.

For months, the Great Recession wrought havoc on the family roofing business that Howard Randol’s grandfather and father started at the end of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Randol’s offices in Glendale and elsewhere had scaled back operations; the work force of more than 40 employees had dropped to half that size.

Then came the pounding, windy rains of January, bringing with them a bumper crop of leaky roofs and a shower of calls to roofing companies.

When the rains started in December, Randol began adding to his staff. On Tuesday, he hired six employees and was running newspaper ads for more workers.

“Right now there aren’t enough roofers,” Randol said. Normally, his San Gabriel-based company has a two-week backlog. Now it is two months. “There are people that we gave estimates to two years ago that are calling us now to do the job.”

Alan Warner, office manager for Stone Roofing Co. in Azusa, reports a similar situation. “We’ve had literally hundreds of calls. We’re getting 60 to 80 leak calls a day. There is no way to handle them all.”

Marty Stout, owner of a Fontana roofing company that does work throughout the region, sees a pattern in all of this.

“When it’s raining, people are begging us to fix their roof. As soon as the rain lets up, they quit begging,” he said. “Then by June, we call them and start begging. Next October, they start begging again.”

The explanation for the abrupt shift is simple, said LeEllen Williams, executive director of the Roofing Contractors Assn. of Southern California, based in El Monte. “We’ve had seven years of drought, and people have not really cared if they had a hole in their roof. Now with all the rain, we’ve had people in a state of panic.”

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Theresa Kosak of Eagle Rock had noticed for some time that the hearth above her fireplace in her high-ceilinged living room was peeling. She ignored it until the major rains started two weeks ago.

The source was a gap, perhaps earthquake-induced, between the roof flashing and the chimney. Some patching tar easily took care of the problem Monday.

“I’ve been watching the television news and seeing these houses sliding down the hill, in Malibu and Laguna,” Kosak said. “So I think: ‘I have just a little water in my fireplace. This is just piddly stuff.’ ”

Kosak’s situation, roofers say, is more common than cases of roofs cracked apart by mudslides or blown off in tornadoes like the ones that hit Covina and Pomona in the last week.

In most cases, roofers say, the leaks spring not from the roofing material but from all the other equipment up there.

Favorite leak-sprouting spots are around skylights, windows, kitchen and bathroom roof vents, doorways and air conditioning and heating units, with their related duct systems and evaporative coolers. Inadequate or clogged drains and faulty gutters also give water an in.

“Bottles, cans, tennis balls, rags, pants, everything imaginable winds up in gutters and drains,” Warner said.

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Randol pointed out the tiny gaps that appeared in the seals of the seams of a duct system on the roof of a Glendale house. Like a chef icing a cake, he spread gooey tar over the gaps.

“You have basically a vacuum cleaner up here that sucks in a lot of water, even if there is a mere pinprick of a hole,” he said.

Inside, where the dining room ceiling was stained, this observation was of little consolation to the homeowner, who had a new roof put on just last year and didn’t expect to have any leaks, from the roof or any other source.

Since the recession began, roofing contractors say, customers commonly have wanted repairs rather than the expense of a new roof.

In some cases, homeowners were content simply to tack down tarps and plastic sheeting, which easily withstood the less intense rains of recent years. “Sometimes all people can afford is a plastic tarp rather than spending $2,000 to $5,000 for a roof,” Randol said.

But now homeowners find those tarps are no match for the torrents of rain this month.

Drenched by a pounding rain, yet moving as sure-footed as a cat, Randol crept Monday along the spine of a brittle red-tile roof that had been leaking for weeks.

Below him, inside the two-story San Marino house where worried homeowners peered from rain-splattered windows, the steady drip, drip, drip of a leak fell from a yellow-stained ceiling and dropped into a pan on an upstairs bedroom floor.

Randol shook out a vast sheet of plastic that his company had placed there earlier this month. A waterfall cascaded from the tarp onto the driveway.

“As long as it’s raining, there’s not much I can do except this,” said the roofer, who laid out a new square of plastic to cover even more of the roof.

For Gladys Valencia, the storms of January brought not horror but a sense of self-satisfaction.

The Alhambra homeowner first noticed the leak in her living room on a rainy December day. She immediately called a roofer she knew; a few weeks and $3,000 later, she had a new roof.

Then she left for a Caribbean vacation, just as the rains of January began. When she returned last week and arrived to a downpour at the airport, she could allow herself a few moments of smugness. She had beaten the rain.

Tips on How to Avoid Scam on Roof Repairs

Homeowners desperately seeking a roofer who is not booked solid are perfect prey for disreputable contractors.

“The rain will bring out all kinds of cons and scam artists,” said Howard Randol of San Gabriel-based Randol Roofing and Construction. Reliable roofers and consumer specialists offer the following tips to avoid making a bad situation worse:

Obtain the roofing contractor’s license number and verify that it is in good standing by contacting the Contractor’s State Licensing Board at (800) 321-2752. A C-39 number designates a roofing license.

Get several estimates.

As with any major home construction project, ask for references--and check them out. Talk to previous customers and, if possible, view the work done.

Be wary of roofers who require large down payments before they start any work.

Be cautious of roofers who do not have a contractor’s license or insurance and solicit door-to-door promising cheap prices.

For referrals or to get answers to any other questions, contact the Roofing Contractors Assn. of Southern California in El Monte at (818) 579-1276.