Still Suffering From the Storm

Alberta Hawn was cooking chicken soup Tuesday wearing rubber boots because her kitchen floor was still covered with dried mud left from the brutal storm 10 days ago.

The smell of mildew still overpowers the smell of the soup.

“That will be our last meal here because all our pots and pans and silverware need to be packed,” said Hawn.

Hawn and her husband, Douglas, 89, are among dozens of elderly Leisure World residents still coping with damage from the Dec. 6 storm that dumped 8 inches of rain in parts of Orange County, the heaviest downpour in a century.

Like the Hawns, many of them have been living in nearby hotels until construction crews repair their homes. They will probably spend another six to eight weeks away until their homes are repaired.

Crews have been working from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. to clean up rain-soaked carpeting and walls and the damage left by mud.

“We were still wading in 4 inches of muddy water on Sunday,” said Douglas Hawn. “We can’t sleep here. We can hardly stand to be in here.”

The flooding was caused when a storm drain backed up and turned a tunnel for golf carts that passes under El Toro Road into a river. The water ran as high as 2 feet up some front doors, making it difficult for residents to open them.

Leisure World officials say they received about 800 telephone calls from residents the Saturday of the downpour. About 20 calls were reports of damaged ceilings; many more were for damaged carpeting and floors.

“Five water evacuation crews have been on site since the day it happened getting water out of the units,” said Tanya McElhaney, Leisure World’s community relations manager. “Four roofing crews are working with our entire staff [of 600 workers] to handle the structural calls.”

At Rossmoor Towers, which houses 350 residents alone, 377 yards of carpeting needs to be replaced at a cost of about $15,000, said Skip Stone, apartment director.

About 19,000 people, who under the association rules must be at least 55 years old, live in Leisure World’s 12,700 condos and co-ops.

McElhaney said Leisure World can’t assess the damages until repairs are completed. She said the 44 individual homeowner associations would pay for the structural damages through their insurance. She said the units’ owners must pay for the loss of their personal property, unless they have their own insurance.

The Hawns were packing anything salvageable so workers can rip out damaged walls and floors and replace kitchen cabinets and carpeting.

Frances Sanfilippo, 73, and her husband Frank, 76, live next door. Their condo is a construction zone as workers were ripping out drywall. The soggy carpeting laid in two piles outside their apartment along with personal belongings that have been ruined.

The yard was littered with water-ravaged possessions: a $3,000 electric bed, photograph albums, furniture and suitcases.

“I woke up at 4 a.m. and stepped into water and mud,” said Frances Sanfilippo, explaining that her children moved undamaged items into a storage facility.

Vernon Pelley, 78, had piled much of his stuff into the middle bedroom, which was relatively unscathed.

“I feel we are living like rats,” said Pelley standing on bare floors, his belongings piled on tables with stacks of magazines boosting them off the floor.

Unlike some of his neighbors, Pelley saved many personal belongings from being damaged by thinking quickly. He lined doorways with towels to keep some mud and water from seeping in and placed curtain bottoms inside buckets. But nothing will bring back the time he has lost.

“It’s been 10 days since it started,” he said. “Those 10 days I will never see again. . . . The happiness of going outside has been taken up by all this calamity.”