For Some Firms, When It Rains, It Pours : Weather: Roofers and takeout eateries are overwhelmed with customers. But other businesses are suffering.
Businesses in rain-pummeled California were left at the mercy of recent storms, which flooded streets and threatened stores, snarled traffic and forced potential customers indoors.
The rainy conditions disrupted truck traffic across the state, delaying and in some cases forcing the cancellation of a wide variety of food and merchandise shipments.
Joseph M. Nieves, vice president at Los Angeles-based Qwikway Trucking Co., said the company called in additional drivers Tuesday to deal with delays.
“We started about an hour early this morning; we are running two or three hours behind,” said Nieves, whose company delivers primarily shoes, apparel and other merchandise to retail stores.
In anticipation of possible Southland road closures, Stater Bros. Markets arranged several special additional shipments to its stores in Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead, Barstow, Victorville and Mojave, where weather conditions are the worst. “Any of our stores facing weather problems have become a priority for shipping,” company President Jack Brown said.
Some businesses reported staffing problems related to the road conditions. Many employees at Mervyn’s department stores statewide were unable to get to work because of flooded roadways, spokeswoman Carol Johnson said. The Mervyn’s store in Napa closed early and had to be sandbagged Monday to protect it from the overflowing Napa River, but the store was open for business Tuesday, she said.
Bank of America said 32 of its approximately 1,000 California branches closed early or never opened Tuesday because of flooding, power failures and other weather-related problems. Five of the closed branches were in the hard-hit Santa Barbara area, spokesman Richard Beebe said.
For Grademaster Construction Co. of North Hills in the San Fernando Valley, completion of a hillside construction project in La Mirada was brought to a halt because of mudslides and flooding.
“It’s ironic, because we were going to cancel the project a few weeks ago because it was too dusty to work,” Grademaster owner Don Perea said.
But Inglewood-based Dunham & Myers Roofing Co. reported a glut of emergency calls--about 150 per day since last week, compared to the usual 10 or so.
“It’s the rainy season when roofers really go to town,” co-owner Mike Jensen said. “There’s so little we can do until the rain stops. But once it does, we’ve got a whole lot of business in store for us.” Some restaurants offering delivery services reported an increase in business. John Goodlad, manager of a Downtown Los Angeles Pizza Hut restaurant, attributed a 25% increase in overall business in recent days to the weather. Carryout orders were down, he said, but pizza deliveries leaped 40% to 50% over the past week.
“We’ve gotten so many orders that there have been backups in deliveries of up to an hour at a time,” he said. “People have been getting mad, but we’re doing the best we can.”
Hardware stores reported brisk business in inclement-weather related items. “All the necessities for swampland are going well,” reported Mark Smith, assistant manager of the Home Depot store in Thousand Oaks.
Many Home Depots in California’s storm regions were offering sandbags free or inexpensively to customers.
“We’ve been giving away sandbags all week, about 1,500 a day,” Smith said.
Throughout the Southland, roofing supplies, tarpaulins and plastic, empty paint buckets and other rain-related items were selling fast. B&B; Hardware in Culver City reported increased sales in protective rain gear.
The weather took a toll on shopping centers too. The Westside Pavilion was “very slow” Tuesday, and employees were busy trying to repair leaky skylights at the 180-store mall, marketing director Pamela Smith said.
“It’s been a real challenge trying to find out where the buckets need to go at times,” Pamela Smith said.
The outdoor Century City Shopping Center & Marketplace, also on the Westside, and its 150 merchants saw a drop in business because of the rain.
“Traffic has definitely been down, . . . and I’m sure that sales are down,” said Linda Frost, marketing director.
However, the center’s 14-screen AMC movie theater has been extremely busy.
“When it’s raining, people like to go to the movies,” she said.
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Staff writer Donna K.H. Walters contributed to this story.
