High-Water Marks for Cooperation : People manage to rise above latest adversity

In the face of the worst flooding to strike the state in a decade, President Clinton has reminded disaster-weary residents of the sturdiest, most precious resource California has: their own resilience in a pinch.

Californians, Clinton said Wednesday, have shown they can “come together in times of crisis and overcome those crises.” He praised their “resilient spirit” and “great sense of community.” Reassuring--and accurate--words.

Amid devastating downpours that are the latest in a series of natural and manmade disasters in recent years, the people once again have displayed grit. Those hit by mudslides, flooding and catastrophic property damage--along with thousands of public employees and good Samaritans--are fighting back against an onslaught that is entering its second week.

The heroes include crews laboring to restore power for as many as 170,000 people across the state, Caltrans employees working around the clock to keep freeways and roads open, and police officers and firefighters who have saved dozens.

Sadly, the extraordinary efforts have not prevented all fatalities. In Orange County, a 12-year-old boy drowned trying to cross rain-swollen Trabuco Creek; the body of a homeless man was pulled from the Ventura River; a Marine officer drowned in a swollen creek at Camp Pendleton.

However, the human loss has been greatly mitigated by lessons learned during California’s last great floods, in 1992. Since then, for example, the National Weather Service has installed state-of-the-art Doppler radar that makes it easier to warn the public when flash floods threaten.

For rescue teams, better efficiency and response have been achieved. After a Woodland Hills teen-ager was swept to his death in a Los Angeles flood-control channel in 1992, local officials provided new equipment and new coordination strategies.

Improvements were also made in the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin, among them more effective communication between L.A. city officials and the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dam there. And in Orange County, federal funds were used to increase the drainage capacity of the Santa Ana River.

Federal and state officials, too, deserve credit for their actions in this emergency. On Tuesday, Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Barbara, Ventura and 20 other counties were declared federal disaster areas. That means Washington stands ready to help, as it did after last year’s Northridge earthquake and the firestorms of 1993. Despite the state’s reputation as a place where people like to go their own independent, sometimes idiosyncratic ways, Californians deeply appreciate a helping hand, whether that hand is a neighbor’s or the federal government’s.