El Nino’s Reign Might Be Over

Wanted: Old, wet and smelly sandbags. Reason: El Nino may have left the region.

While weather experts caution to keep umbrellas handy, city officials in Huntington Beach are asking people to drop off sandbags under the belief that El Nino has said farewell to Southern California.

But in its wake, officials said $58 million in damage has been caused by the relentless weather phenomenon that in Orange County toppled expensive homes, chewed up concrete storm channels and caused at least two deaths.

Statewide, the toll is $550 million in damage and mounting, said officials in the governor’s office of emergency services.

County emergency disaster officials are calling the series of storms one of the worst, bringing a total of 92.86 inches of rain to Santiago Peak and 27.72 inches in Santa Ana, the highest rainfall in 20 years at both locations.

“Based on preliminary information, damages to [Orange County] public facilities are in the top third and no doubt some of the cities in Orange County are among the most significantly impacted in the state,” said David Fukutomi, deputy public assistance officer with the governor’s office of emergency services.

The damage was felt from Yorba Linda to San Clemente--it seemed there was no area of the county left unscathed by the rain, wind, snow and sometimes even tornadoes. High surf and high tides ripped apart mobile homes in San Clemente’s Capistrano Shores area while inland, Yorba Linda suffered slope failure that undermined Upper Hidden Hills Road, a major connector to hundreds of residents in eastern Yorba Linda.

“I can tell you that in the ‘82-83 storms we got beat up pretty badly,” said Bill Reiter, county flood control director. “But this year’s damage was more spread out. Our roadways were hit pretty bad, such as Santiago and Silverado [canyon roads]. They were all closed this year because of heavy flooding and we didn’t have that in the March storm in 1983.”

Laguna Beach, hit by repeated disasters, topped all Orange County cities with $10.99 million in damages to homes, roads and buildings.

Mudslides killed two people and injured nine after a devastating Feb. 23 storm loosened a wall of mud that swept through eight homes in the Laguna canyon area of Laguna Beach.

Also, Laguna Beach Unified School District interim Supt. Barbara Callard said repairs to a collapsed hillside behind Top of the World Elementary School have been conservatively estimated at $1 million and won’t be finished until summer.

“I’ve heard estimates of everything from hundreds of thousands of dollars to $3 million,” Callard said. “The most expensive is to shore the hillside and bring in dirt, though there are alternatives.”

No classrooms currently are in jeopardy but they can be if no action is taken, she said. The district has spent $18,000 on geological studies of the hillside.

The school district repairs highlight one of the problems officials face. With the area declared a federal emergency, Callard and other public administrators are eager to send repair costs to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which reimburses repair work on large-scale public projects such as at Top of the World.

Newport Beach has reported $460,000 in damage from earlier storms. But estimates of the damage have skyrocketed. A major flood channel that empties at Little Corona Beach was ripped apart, city engineer Bill Patapoff said.

“Our initial estimate was $300,000 in repairs and now it’s $800,000,” Patapoff said. The problem is that a torrent of water sped down a gully wiping out a concrete stairway and also exposing a sewer line that had to be shut down. Now the line has to be replaced and the slope repaired, he said.

Damage costs continue to increase throughout Orange County, said Fukutomi with the office of emergency services.

“It’s obviously not over yet,” he said. “The damage figure may continue to increase. And they do tend to fluctuate greatly with actual costs for repair.”

Local growers were hard hit, especially growers of the county’s $32-million annual strawberry crop, which took a $457,720 loss because of flooding. In other regions, such as Central California, the price of iceberg lettuce is starting to make headlines because growers in Salinas were prevented from planting lettuce in flooded fields.

John Ellis, county deputy agricultural commissioner, said the full extent of local damage and whether it will hurt the region’s pocketbooks won’t be known until late summer. Other crops also were affected, including radicchio, celery, lettuce and Napa cabbage, he said.

“The infamy that El Nino created has made [growers] change cropping patterns,” Ellis said. “Cold weather crops such as lettuce couldn’t be planted because it was too wet. This has forced growers to move to alternate crops such as green beans or squash.”

Intense rainfall, especially from the Dec. 6 storm that dumped more than 6 to 8 inches in the South County cities of Laguna Beach, Irvine and Laguna Hills, overwhelmed storm drainage systems and caused flooding.

One of the areas that suffered the most flooding was the campus of UC Irvine, where more than $480,000 in damage was reported to its library and student dormitories.

“The library has an outside entrance to the basement “and there was water nearly 4 feet high that filled up behind glass walls,” said Larry Buss, UC Irvine senior superintendent for buildings. “It was really scary, the glass doors and glass windows holding the water in were bulging out, literally bowing.”

More than 3,000 books were water damaged, prompting librarians to borrow space in refrigerators and frozen meat lockers from area grocers to help save the books. The process involves crystallizing the water molecules by freezing them and having them dehydrate when air dried, Buss said.

John Sibley, administrator of the county’s Public Facilities & Resources Department, said his office is finishing an overall damage report for the season which will be completed in four weeks. But so far, the estimate is at about $58 million, he said.

“The last big El Nino in ‘82-83 was bigger in terms of damage,” Sibley said. “But in terms of preparedness such as getting ready, which included our Web site and call-in phone number, and talking to the cities, it definitely had an impact, especially when you look at damage in other parts of the country. I think we’ve been very fortunate.”

Fukutomi agreed and gave the county and local cities high marks for taking one of the most “pro-active” approaches to El Nino that included a media blitz, offering user-friendly tips on flood prevention and giving out sandbags. “There is no doubt in our minds that damage would have been higher if the county had not done what it did,” he said.

But is El Nino over? Can the recycling of sandbags begin?

No, according to Bill Patzert, the El Nino expert at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

“I’m going to counsel caution,” Patzert said. “This El Nino still remains warm in the tropics. It’s not completely off the wall here for the next month or two months to have more rain because the tropics areas remains warm and volatile. So don’t pick up those sandbags.”

Patzert said that although the warm pool in the eastern Pacific Ocean has shrunk to the size it was in January 1997, water temperatures there still are 4 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

Capt. Scott Brown with the Orange County Fire Authority said that regardless of the region’s spate of balmy days and sunny skies, he agreed with Patzert.

“There’s nothing to indicate we are out of the woods yet,” said Brown after conferring with a county weather technician. “In fact, we are looking at this El Nino to go through the end of April and even through at least May. We have a chance of getting more rain.”

“It’s premature to advise our residents to get rid of sandbags,” Brown said.

Huntington Beach officials were trying to be optimistic, said Jim Hanggi, a city spokesman, who didn’t think the city was jumping the gun. “We’re just trying to let people know that there’s a place for their sandbags when it’s over rather than let them stay at their houses.”

Sandbags received from the city can be returned to the city corporate yard, 17371 Gothard St., from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Hanggi said. The bags, depending on condition, may be thrown away. The sand may be reclaimed.

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Costing Out El Nino

About half the El Nino-related damage in Orange County through March 31 was to either county or city property. Damage tally, Dec. 6, 1997 to March 31:

County: $15,450,000

Cities: 11,616,923

Private residences: 9,257,500

Businesses: 6,927,100

Special districts: 3,122,239

Schools: 1,672,600

Agriculture: 1,271,647

Other: 4,265,005

Total: $53,583,014

*

Orange County’s 27.72 inches of rainfall this year, as recorded in Santa Ana, is the second highest total recorded during the last 40 years--with more than two months remaining in the season. Seasons run from July 1 to June 30. The top 10 full seasons since 1957:

1977-78: 28.52

1982-83: 26.55

1994-95: 24.76

1992-93: 24.12

1957-58: 22.11

1979-80: 21.20

1968-69: 19.71

1978-79: 18.47

1972-73: 16.30

1985-86: 16.09

40-year average: 12.93

Sources: Orange County Emergency Operations Center, Orange County Public Facilities & Resources Department; Researched by JANICE JONES DODDS / Los Angeles Times