Selling Up a Storm

There’s not a cloud in the sky and midday temperatures in this inland community have been hovering in the high 90s for weeks, but at Brea Roofing Inc. everyone’s attention is focused on winter rainstorms.

The company is one of scores of Southland businesses already feeling the impact of Southern California residents’ growing concerns over warnings that this could be one of the wettest winters in decades.

From charter boats carrying record crowds of anglers to the warm-water-enriched fishing grounds in the Catalina channel to insurance offices mailing out reminders about flood coverage, the climatic condition known as El Nino is the topic of the day.

“That’s all we hear about,” said Barbara Shirley, office manager at Brea Roofing. “We are already booked into November, and we’re turning business away. Everyone who’s calling for repairs or new roofs says they’re getting ready for El Nino.”

Other weatherproofing professionals say they haven’t experienced a business boom yet. But wait until the first rains come down, they note.

“People usually don’t realize that they need to replace their weatherstripping until the water starts coming in,” said Joe Camuglia, owner of CJ Weatherstrip Co. in Laguna Hills. “That’s when I’ll see my business start picking up.”

The cyclical El Nino phenomenon, which lasts from 12 to 20 months, begins with a reversal of the trade winds, which usually blow from east to west and cool the ocean’s surface. That causes the ocean and the moist area above it to warm, which in turn causes heavy, rain-laden clouds to form. The reversed winds push the clouds out of the normal rain zone over the Pacific and back over the western United States.

The condition could bring a huge increase in California’s rainfall. In the 1982-83 rainy season, El Nino conditions brought torrential storms and record surf that together caused $265 million in damage to public and private property in California, ripped up the Santa Monica, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach piers and forced more than 15,000 people out of flooded homes.

A storm on March 1, 1983, dumped 4 inches of rain on central Orange County in six hours, causing more than $40 million in damage. A total of 1,110 homes were flooded when storm drains overflowed or unkempt roofs began leaking.

Now weather forecasters are warning that a new El Nino could bring the worst rains in 50 years.

Jim Conrad, a State Farm Insurance agent in Seal Beach, took note of the El Nino warnings and sent a letter to hundreds of clients recently, reminding them that homeowner policies don’t cover flood damage. The federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program does sell flood coverage.

State Farm, like most major insurance companies, writes and services the policies, although consumers also can contact the national program directly if they don’t want to go through a commercial agent.

“Marketing of the federal flood policy has definitely stepped up this year,” said Candysse Miller, director of the Western Insurance Information Service. “It’s not surprising, in wake of the flooding in the Central Valley last year and the discovery that only about 25% of the people with damage had flood coverage.

“It used to be that people would wait till the storm clouds were on the horizon and then call their agents and take out a policy, but you can’t do that anymore,” she said. “There’s a 30-day waiting period before the coverage kicks in.”

Conrad says he sent letters to his clients so they’d be forewarned. “I didn’t want anyone coming to me afterward and complaining that they didn’t know they could get flood coverage,” he said.

The agent, whose territory includes parts of Long Beach, says he wrote about 25 flood policies last year, “usually for people who were buying homes and were required by their mortgage lenders to get it.”

This year, he said, he expects to write about 100 policies, most for people voluntarily signing up because of El Nino worries. “I wrote five just today,” he said Monday, “and we’re getting a lot of calls.”

Not from Ruby’s Diner Inc., though.

The Newport Beach-based chain boldly built a pair of its signature 1950s diner-style restaurants at the ends of the restored Seal Beach and Huntington Beach piers.

But the company doesn’t carry any special flood insurance on the two restaurants, marketing director Valerie Schepens said.

“We’re confident that the piers are sound,” she said. “We’ve had a restaurant on the Newport Beach pier, and it wasn’t damaged last time. We’ve not lost one yet, and we don’t anticipate losing any this year.”

Hardware and home improvement stores say there’s been no notable increase yet in demand for rainy season items, such as tarpaulins, sump pumps and waterproofing caulks and cements.

“The people are concerned about the heat, not the wet,” said Umesh Patel, a cashier at Springdale Ace Hardware in a low-lying section of Huntington Beach. “We’re selling fans, not tarps.”

The big chains say they aren’t stocking up many rainy season supplies. “We can get orders in 24 hours these days, so there’s no point in spending the money now to build up our stock,” said Marie Krosen Connell, spokeswoman for Irvine-based HomeBase Inc. “But we’re tracking the weather reports very closely, and as we get closer to the rainy season, we’ll start making those decisions.”

Not everyone is waiting, though. Sand and gravel quarries say they are beginning to receive a flood of calls from contractors and city agencies that want to begin stockpiling sand and sandbags in case the worst does happen.

“The phones started ringing off the hook last week,” said George Visser, office manager at Saddleback Sand & Gravel Co. in Lake Forest. “We’ve probably got about 50 bids out already to contractors who figure they’re going to need a lot of sandbags for erosion control.”

He said Malibu city officials are buying filled sandbags from Saddleback Sand and other quarries as they prepare for yet another winter of rain-swollen creeks and mudslides.

The warmer waters associated with El Nino already have created a bonanza for charter fishing companies up and down the coast. Charter operators say they are handling record numbers of anglers who are reeling in record numbers of fish.

The warm current, which later this year could spawn devastating storms, now is luring schools of game fish such as yellowtail tuna and dorado--also called mahi-mahi--usually not found in abundance this far north of the equator. Boaters in Oregon have reported sightings of marlin, usually found in Mexican waters, said Sergio Fainsztein, assistant manager at Davey’s Locker in Newport Beach.

The venerable charter company--founded in the late 1940s--runs six boats, and for most of the summer they have been stuffed to the gunwales with anglers. Even on weekdays, Fainsztein said, the boats are going out with few empty spaces, including the company’s 80-foot day boat, Freelance, which carries 90 people.

“The last time we saw something like this was in 1982-83,” said Fainsztein, adding that he hopes the similarities won’t carry over into the rainy season.

* STORM SUMMIT: Federal, state and local officials will coordinate their preparations for a wet winter. A22

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Preparing for El Nino

The most destructive El Nino of the past 50 years occurred in 1982-83. Effects on California:

* Torrential rains and flooding caused 14 deaths, $265 million in damage and the evacuation of 15,000 people.

* High tides eroded the coastline, dislodged kelp beds and destroyed oceanfront homes and landmark piers.

Impact on Businesses

Many businesses already have seen or are anticipating increased activity as consumers prepare for a wet winter. Among them:

* Charter and commercial fishing

* Roofing companies

* Landscape and building contractors

* Hardware and home improvement stores

* Insurance agencies

* Sand and gravel suppliers

Source: WeatherData, USA Today Weather Almanac, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times