FEMA Chief Is Caught in a Disaster in the Making : Granada Hills: James Lee Witt, at Kennedy High to talk about quake recovery efforts, ends up getting a firsthand view of the local deluge.

The nation’s disaster czar came to Los Angeles to talk about one catastrophe Tuesday but found himself caught right smack in the middle of another emergency in the making.

James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was supposed to be talking to students at Kennedy High School in Granada Hills about recovery efforts from the Jan. 17 earthquake. But the subject quickly turned to the drenching rain outside.

“Are any of you flooded out today?” the soft-spoken Witt asked the assembled students. When they just laughed, the FEMA director responded in an understated tone: “It is wet out there.”

Witt quipped to the students that he tends to attract natural disasters.

When he was first selected to be a judge--an administrative post that included overseeing local disaster relief--in his native state of Arkansas, it snowed every week for nearly two months. When he became director of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services, one of the worst tornadoes in the state’s history struck. And, when he took over the top job at FEMA, a 500-year flood hit the Midwest.

“You better hope I never get elected President,” Witt joked.

Witt said that he was in constant contact with the White House on the flooding conditions in Northern and Southern California and that federal disaster teams were already working with the state.

“It’s really hard right now to get a real good feel for it because rain’s still falling,” he said. “As the weather clears, we’ll know better. We’ll know something more in the next couple days.”

Statewide damage estimates would not be prepared for at least a day or two, he said, adding that once Gov. Pete Wilson formally requests federal disaster assistance, Congress would probably be asked to approve it.

As Witt toured Kennedy, one of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s most heavily quake-damaged schools, his staff scurried to update and change his schedule. A trip to Fillmore to boast about earthquake repairs had to be scrapped because his helicopter was grounded and roads were closed. “Maybe next week,” Witt said with a smile.

Scheduled television and radio interviews, set up for Witt to discuss the one-year anniversary of the Northridge earthquake, became conversations about flooding and federal aid.

Witt remained undaunted by both the pelting rain and the upheaval to his schedule. Asked about his drive from Downtown Los Angeles to Granada Hills, he said, “Wet, wet, wet. We came out on the interstate, the freeway, and it was just pouring.

“It was just bumper to bumper,” he said, shielded from the rain by umbrella-toting aides. “Roads were being closed. It was just terrible.”

But not as bad as the time he went to the Midwest to assess flood damage and found himself caught in an ice storm. Or last year when he came to Los Angeles to coordinate earthquake relief and experienced his first temblor--a magnitude 5.3 aftershock at about 3:30 one morning.

“I’m from Arkansas, and the bed was shaking and the building was rattling,” Witt said. “It was something.”

To his staff, the pouring rain was a major inconvenience and one that took away from the primary reason Witt was in town--to promote what they view as the administration’s quick and efficient response to last year’s earthquake.

Traveling in two FEMA vans, Witt and his entourage braved flooded intersections and freeways to make scheduled television and radio station interviews Tuesday afternoon.

“We’re just taking it one step at a time at this point,” Shirley Mattingly, a FEMA regional director who accompanied Witt, said in the afternoon. “It’s still up in the air what we’re going to do.”