Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Council Assesses Damage From Last Week’s Deluge

The State of the City luncheon for city officials on Tuesday was supposed to be an occasion for looking back on the earthquake that hammered the Santa Clarita Valley one year ago.

But once the City Council-sponsored lunch was over, the talk turned to a far more recent natural disaster.

City Manager George Caravalho told the council, which called a special session after the lunch, that this month’s heavy rains have cost Santa Clarita $270,000 for cleanup, including about $150,000 needed to shore up sections of the Newhall area that have eroded.

“We had trucks hauling in dirt and boulders into Newhall, 24 hours per day, since Friday,” Caravalho said.

Another $50,000 was spent on repairs to Sierra Highway, he said. In addition to these funds, $100,000 more would be needed to repair other area roads, Caravalho announced.

In response, the City Council passed a state of emergency declaration to allow Santa Clarita to apply for reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

This declaration came only two weeks after the city officially ended its state of emergency stemming from the Northridge earthquake.

As a result of that earthquake, Santa Clarita officials told the 200 attendees at the luncheon, the city cleaned up an estimated 240,000 tons of debris.

A report issued at the event showed that about 98% of this debris has been recycled, most of it being transformed into road base material.

But a bit of the debris was reserved to be compressed into commemorative bricks, 200 of which were distributed as luncheon favors.