Boxer Announces L.A. Summit on Preparing for El Nino

Federal, state and local officials plan to gather next month in Los Angeles for a summit on El Nino, the weather condition that some predict will cause the wettest California winter since at least 1982-83 and perhaps in half a century, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced Thursday.

News of the summit--which came hours after a lengthy congressional subcommittee hearing on the unusual oceanographic force that causes storms and droughts worldwide--pleased California leaders who had been prodding the Clinton administration to take a more aggressive approach in getting ready for the expected weather problems.

“We are preparing for the worst in California and hoping for the best,” testified Douglas P. Wheeler, Gov. Pete Wilson’s secretary for resources.

Six weather experts who briefed the House’s Energy and Environment subcommittee Thursday refused to speculate exactly how much rain El Nino would dump on the Pacific Coast but said Southern California could easily see up to three times its normal precipitation.

The experts urged passage next week of an appropriations bill that includes $18 million for two El Nino-related research projects, arguing that investment in understanding the phenomenon would ultimately save the government millions in disaster relief.

“We really believe that pre-disaster mitigation is the old adage of an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure,” said Michael J. Armstrong of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “We can’t control the climate, but we can control how we choose to prepare for and live with that climate.”

FEMA Director James Lee Witt, who is to attend the summit in Los Angeles scheduled for Oct. 14-15, echoed those comments at a news conference in Boxer’s Capitol Hill office. “One dollar spent on mitigation prevents $2 in disaster relief later,” he said. “It’s cost-effective.”

Plans for the summit grew out of a letter Boxer wrote to Clinton last month urging him to organize a federal task force on El Nino.

Witt said the conference would gather high-level officials from many of the federal government’s 28 emergency-related agencies, as well as scores of local bureaucrats, politicians and business leaders for a series of workshops on preparing for the potential onslaught.

Unlike a detailed discussion of the science of El Nino at the Scripps Institution in La Jolla in June, the Los Angeles summit will focus on more practical concerns: cleaning storm drains, building levies, stockpiling sandbags and encouraging residents and business owners to buy flood insurance.

“This isn’t academic, it’s pragmatic,” Boxer said, recalling the winter of 1982, when water rushed down the hill at her Marin County home.

FEMA is also launching an English- and Spanish-language radio advertising campaign next week in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco that urges people to buy flood insurance.

As Boxer and Witt focus on potential floods, farmers elsewhere in the nation and world are struggling with droughts triggered by the same El Nino phenomenon. In Indonesia’s coffee-growing region, thousands are praying for an end to the hot, dry weather that is ruining their crops. In the Philippines, farmers circle their fields carrying images of the Christ child, for whom El Nino is named. In Australia, some ranchers have simply let their cattle free in frustration.

But some Southern Californians are taking a decidedly “half-full glass” approach to El Nino’s impacts.

“My surfing friends are already experiencing El Nino and enjoying it. We’d like it to stay around as long as possible,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), boasting of big waves and warm water. “In terms of one segment of the population, El Nino is terrific!”

* FLOODED WITH BUSINESS: Scores of firms feel impact of worries about this winter. D1