The Little Disasters : Rains Plague Homeowners With Minor Woes

OK, so it’s not a catastrophic mudslide or a broken bridge or a flooded field. But that squishy carpet with the peculiar wet-goat smell definitely qualifies as a nuisance. So does the mucky basement. The peeling paint. And of course, the army of black ants swarming possessively around the kitchen sink.

Far from the spectacular calamities that grabbed so much attention this weekend, homeowners across Southern California spent Monday toting up their own losses. And found them considerable.

More mundane than the major disasters, yes, but infinitely troublesome. Messy, stinky, goopy, costly. And, at the moment, just as urgent in their own parochial ways.

“People are fairly self-centered,” said Los Angeles roofer Tim Trujillo. “They don’t care about anyone else. Their roof is leaking and they want it fixed now.”

From his post as a sales representative for a Los Angeles hardware store, Marvin Armstrong has counseled many of these distraught homeowners in the past few days. He has explained the intricacies of plastic sheeting and described how to plug leaks with a tar-like concoction called Henry’s 208.

Forced out of a shattered apartment after last year’s earthquake, Armstrong and his wife bought a condominium in Inglewood several months ago. The rain came in so fast that they grabbed their 6-month-old daughter and sought refuge in a hotel during the weekend, leaving behind a light brown carpet sprouting patches of greenish mold.

A roofer has promised to seal the cracks on their Inglewood condo--sometime in April.

“It’s unbelievable,” Armstrong, 29, said glumly. “I love the rain, but too much is too much.”

At least he’s patient. Some customers imperiously demand service at 10 p.m. An April appointment simply will not do.

“We’re two or three weeks backlogged, but people want it done now,” said Neal Shehab, sales manager for A-1 All American Roofing. “They think we’re like Jesus and we can stop the rain,” Shehab grumbled. “They make it very difficult for us.”

Or, occasionally, stunningly easy.

When Shehab responded to one frantic call for help during the February deluge, he found the leak quickly enough: a wide-open bathroom window.

“People are very stressed, and they’re not thinking very logically,” concluded Al Casas, the owner of the Bobcat carpet cleaning service in Santa Monica. “Some people think we should drop everything and help them move out of their house.”

Even when rain victims think logically, they often do the wrong thing. It would seem perfectly sensible, for example, to rinse off a slime-encrusted carpet. But if the soiled rug is made of delicate threads, it may be better to rush in an expert.

Alco Carpet Service owner Robert Weller has seen mud leach the color out of fine Persian rugs, leaving them looking as though they have been splashed with acid. To protect the carpets, he rinses them with chemically treated water and sprays on an anti-microbial mist. The process can cost up to $2,000 for a standard 9-by-12-foot rug, Weller said--but it can save precious carpets from an owner’s misguided attempt to clean them.

Another common post-rain blunder--blasting a patch of sodden carpet with warm air--also requires expert intervention.

Heat stimulates the odor-causing bacteria burrowed inside damp carpet. And once the bacteria start breeding, the mildew spreads to drapes, bedding, even clothes. Some professional carpet cleaners say they need three to five days to ferret out and destroy every last microbe.

As if microscopic bacteria weren’t bad enough, bigger bugs also emerge in eye-popping numbers after rainstorms. Black ants scurry into homes to dry off. Termites dash from one waterlogged nest to another, and create new colonies in moist wood. And spiders invade kitchens looking for food.

What’s more, any stagnant water pooled outdoors will attract gnats, snails and all sorts of other crawling and flying creatures, said Noel Muniz, assistant manager of Dewey Pest Control in West Los Angeles.

Just as bugs invade homes after downpours, so do weeds commandeer prime turf on vacant lots, sidewalk cracks and well-manicured lawns.

“Unfortunately, weeds never wash away,” said Tom Lockett, a landscape architect with Land Images in Marina del Rey. “They find ways to stick around.”

Flowers are not so tenacious.

*

Susan Seidel’s lush Pasadena garden took a beating in the recent rains. Her Iceland poppies hit the ground, and her camellias withered. “If you’re going to have a luncheon party in your garden, you’ll probably have a lot of work to do because of all the brown buds,” she said.

As the vicious mudslides demonstrated, damage to plants can create havoc. The best protection is solid ground cover--plants like coyote brush, with strong, spreading roots that create an underground network holding the soil in place, Lockett said.

For all the alarming footage of soil sloshing down hills and crashing into homes, many people still continue to landscape with ice plant, which contributes nothing to erosion control, Lockett said.

Roofers report similar widespread denial in their fields: Homeowners simply refuse to invest in brand-new roofs, figuring that major storms will pass by their neighborhoods.

“Some customers I’ve been telling for years to get their roof fixed,” Trujillo said. “They say, ‘Just patch it up and I’ll get to it next year.’ This procrastination goes on and on and on.”

Trujillo can think of only one explanation for such stubbornness. “People are eternally optimistic,” he said with a sigh. “They figure the sun’s going to come out. They think this is the last rain.”