Rain Resumes in North; Many Remain Isolated : Disaster: Caltrans now says temporary I-5 bridge can be up by Saturday. Residents worry about jobs, homes.

While rain resumed pelting Northern California and threatened new flooding, the Monterey area began Monday to dig out from the punishing weekend storm that left thousands isolated from their homes and jobs by washed-out bridges.

The small farm town of Pajaro remained a flooded ghost town, its 4,000 residents forced by a breached levee on the Pajaro River to spend a third day waiting and worrying. Under cloud-darkened skies and intermittent drizzle, many of the displaced gathered on the bridge that separates their town from Watsonville and begged sheriff’s deputies to let them go home.

Two hundred yards away, across the swollen river, most of Pajaro’s streets were still awash in standing water or slicked with silt. Many of those eyeing the receding flood had no jobs waiting for them because thousands of acres of strawberries, lettuce and artichokes are submerged and the packing plants are silent.

Antonio Santana, 25, gazed across the river at his abandoned home, fretting about the food spoiling in his refrigerator, mourning his lost job at a closed vegetable plant.

“How are we going to find food to eat, to pay the next rent?” said Santana, as he clasped the hand of his wife, Bertha Ulloa, for support. “It’s going to be hard for us. We have no more money.”

In nearby Castroville, an estimated 2,000 residents were evacuated Sunday night because of flooding and a raw sewage spill. Most were allowed to return to their homes Monday. But a public health alert remained and many were told to boil water.

“Some of these people could be in the shelter for a week,” said Lorin Hoffman, spokeswoman for the Monterey County Red Cross. “We had the mandatory closure of a whole city.”

In other storm developments Monday:

* Caltrans officials acknowledged that an Interstate 5 bridge, swept away by debris from raging floodwaters, had not been retrofitted under a state program to update structures vulnerable to such damage. However, officials shortened their estimate for reopening a crucial 184-mile length of Interstate 5 through the San Joaquin Valley, announcing that a temporary bridge could be opened to traffic by Saturday. Officials had initially estimated it could take a month to build a temporary two-lane structure.

* Monterey County officials tentatively identified a Pajaro resident whose body washed out to sea Sunday, bringing the statewide death toll from the most recent storm to at least 12. In Fresno County, family members of two missing motorists who had washed off of I-5 when the bridge over the rampaging Arroyo Pasajero Creek collapsed, found the bodies of their loved ones in an orchard. One body remains unaccounted for.

* The Monterey Peninsula regained road access to the outside world when California 68 was opened to traffic, but long delays lasted all day. California 1 remained closed both north and south of Monterey.

* In the Sierra Nevada, only the California 41 entrance to Yosemite National Park was open Monday because mudslides from the weekend storm closed the two other access routes from the San Joaquin Valley. Officials also grappled with a Sunday spill of 8,000 gallons of raw sewage into Lake Tahoe, caused by a power failure.

* The number of counties that have declared themselves as local disaster areas rose to 45--more than the 43 that declared disasters in the harsh January storms.

* An estimated 8,400 gallons of crude oil spilled into floodwaters near the San Joaquin Valley town of Huron, from a broken Chevron pipeline. A spokesman for the state State Department of Water Resources said that only a “very minor” amount got into the California Aqueduct, the Southland’s main water source.

Rains were expected to continue over the northern third of the state today and decrease Wednesday. Flood officials were watching the Clear Lake area in Lake County and the banks of the Sacramento River in Tehama County for runaway waters. Southern California should stay dry for the rest of the week, according to forecasters.

State water officials said the weekend storm was comparable to the four worst storms in the 20th Century for their ferocity and the breadth of devastation. The storm was felt from the Oregon border through Orange County and probably did its worst damage to agricultural land in Monterey County. Rep. Sam Farr (D-Monterey) estimated that 50,000 acres of prime farmland was flooded.

“This is the worst that anyone can ever remember,” said Sharon Clark, deputy agriculture commissioner for Monterey County. “All the crops seem to have substantial damage.”

In Sacramento, Caltrans officials seeking explanations for the collapse of a bridge on Interstate 5 near Coalinga acknowledged Monday that they may never know exactly what caused the double span to fall into Arroyo Pasajero Creek.

Either the intense speed of the flood water rushing down the creek caused rocks and debris to undermine the bridge pilings, said Caltrans Director James van Loben Sels, or the wall of water was high enough to reach the bridge decks and knock them off their supports.

Other transportation officials disclosed that under direction from the federal government Caltrans had, for the last three years, been inspecting all bridges considered vulnerable to damage from heavy scouring by rivers and creeks.

Although 124 bridges had been considered highly vulnerable and given top priority for replacement or retrofitting, the two bridges over Arroyo Pasajero Creek were not among them. Those bridges, which had also failed in 1969, had been placed in a secondary category with 1,264 other bridges that were slated for more thorough review but not considered in any immediate danger.

Jim Roberts, the state’s chief bridge engineer, said the Coalinga area bridges were not placed on the high priority list. Based on the weather history of the area, engineers had never expected the water flowing down the creek to reach the volume and the speed that it did last week.

He said the two bridges, which had been examined at two-year intervals, had been found at each inspection to be in good condition.

Roberts estimated that new bridges will be constructed in less than six months. In the meantime, he said, enough progress has been made on a temporary two-lane bridge built with railroad flatcars that traffic may resume flowing this weekend.

Seven people are presumed to have died when their cars plunged into the turbulent water Friday night. On Monday, two bodies of presumed flood victims were discovered by friends and family members after officials had given up the search because of dangerously high water levels.

Salvador Rosas, 34, a chef at the Harris Ranch restaurant along I-5, was found clinging to a tree in an orchard about 1 1/2 miles downstream from the washed-out bridge. Jesus DeAnda, 27, a farm worker in nearby Huron, was found in the same orchard. Only one body remains undiscovered.

In the Monterey area, the reopening of California 68 on Monday allowed weekend visitors trapped in the tourist city to get out and commuters and truck traffic to get in. The result was three- to four-hour delays during rush hour on the 17-mile stretch from Salinas.

Over the weekend the city of Monterey was entirely cut off by flooding, mudslides and debris. California 1 north of Monterey was expected to reopen today and later this week a temporary bridge over the Carmel River should allow traffic to resume south, officials said.

For the third day, residents of sodden Pajaro waited at a Red Cross shelter at the Santa Cruz County fairgrounds in Watsonville or at a nearby shantytown of tents and campers. The latest fatality in the storm was a Pajaro man, eager to get back into town Sunday, who eluded officials and dove into the turbulent Pajaro River. His body has not been recovered and officials believe that it was washed out to sea.

“He went down the third time as he passed that trestle down there,” said Monterey County Sheriff’s Sgt. Terry Kaiser Kaiser as he pointed downriver. “He hasn’t been seen since.”

Most of the Pajaro residents evacuated Friday night and early Saturday morning were given less than an hour to collect their belongings and race from the river. On Monday, they complained angrily that they should be allowed to return home, where the floodwaters that had once reached nine feet are beginning to recede from the streets.

“A lot of them are walking around in the clothes on their back and that’s it,” said Kaiser as he kept people from walking into Pajaro.

Sheriff’s deputies were concerned Monday about sewage in the river and the threat of water-borne diseases. Residents had more immediate concerns.

“I work at the Pajaro Food Center, at least I did,” said Eddie Reclesado, 36, in shorts and shirt sleeves in the soft rain. “It’s wiped out now.”

At the site of the ruptured Chevron oil pipeline, more than 80 company workers set out in a fleet of rented aluminum boats, skimming flooded farm fields with vacuum and containment booms. Their efforts were apparently successful, and state and company officials estimate that only about 10 gallons of oil entered the California Aqueduct.

Another potential source of contamination was the salt- and pesticide-laden water that entered the aqueduct via agricultural pumping or through a breach in the aqueduct near Huron. Farmers drain their fields by pumping this tainted water directly into the aqueduct.

Times staff writers Mark Arax in Fresno, Virginia Ellis in Sacramento and Kenneth Reich in Los Angeles contributed to this story. Paddock reported from Pajaro and La Ganga from Los Angeles.

* WASHED OUT: El Toro Road closed north of Santa Margarita Parkway. B3

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Monterey Troubles

Monterey County used Monday’s break from the rain to begin digging out from the weekend storm. The city of Montery was no longer isolated when California 68 reopened.

A) Pajaro: About 4,000 people remain evacuated from the inundated town after a levee broke on the Pajaro River.

B) Castroville: About 2,000 residents were evacuated because of sewage-contaminated flood water. Most were allowed back Monday.

C) Califonia 1: Closed from Pajaro to Castroville because of flooding.

D) California 68: Opened Monday, the only route into Monterey. Traffic heavily backed up.

E) California 1: Closed at Carmel River because of bridge collapse.