Life Is Short for Signal Box in Basin

A layer of gunk clung to just about everything in the Sepulveda Basin on Monday after flooding from the weekend’s storms--hardly surprising for a flood basin.

But near the center of the muddy basin stood a 6-foot-high traffic signal control tower, looking clean, shiny and brand new.

That’s because it was.

Every time the basin floods--which it is designed to do during major storms--the electronic control unit has to be replaced with a new unit.

The replacement cost: $6,000. And that’s every time.

Adding insult to injury--Monday was the second time in less than a week that the unit had to be replaced. The storm Feb. 3 wiped it out, too.

“It’s very discouraging,” said Larry Bickett, the city Transportation Department’s signal supervisor for the San Fernando Valley. “That location is just a write-off when it floods.”

The control unit is at the intersection of Burbank Boulevard and Woodley Avenue, from where it controls several traffic lights.

“If you have an intersection in the middle of a flood basin, you have to expect this kind of thing is going to happen,” Bickett said.

The unit has now been replaced at least eight times in the last 20 years, he said.

But Transportation Department officials refuse to declare the situation a washout. For years, they’ve been working on creating a flood-proof traffic control unit--perhaps the world’s first.

“Every solution you could think of has been suggested,” said Bickett. “Some have been pretty harebrained.”

One discarded plan was to build a unit that would rise with the waters like the float in a toilet tank.

“The idea was that the unit could be made buoyant enough to float up from its concrete foundation,” said Brian Gallagher, a transportation engineer in charge of traffic signals. “It would have slid up some kind of guide pole.”

The problem was not getting the unit up in the air, but what might happen when it slid back down.

“There was the possibility wires would be all over the place,” he said. “It was too dangerous.”

One frustrated maintenance worker, watching the heavy rains last week, took it upon himself to wrap the unit, in the manner of Cristo, with plastic sheets.

“That,” Bickett said with heavy irony, “did a lot of good.”

So why not just make a watertight cabinet? Answer: Because the delicate electronic equipment inside requires circulating air to keep it cool.

“There have to be vent holes to prevent overheating,” said Gallagher. “That’s how the water gets in if the basin really gets flooded--through the vents.”

How about stilts? Impractical. To get out of harm’s way, it would have to be 12 or more feet up in the air.

“We have to get into the control units all the time for inspections and maintenance,” he said, “much more often than we have a flood. . . . Getting someone hoisted up there, every time, would take a lot of time and equipment.”

The department also considered moving the unit to higher ground.

“The problem with that is that you’d have to move it so far away, that there would be voltage loss in the wires,” Bickett said.

Still under consideration is a cabinet that would be airtight except for a chimney--17 feet high--to vent the hot air.

“That would get it above the flood waters,” Gallagher said.

Or at least create a new tourist attraction.

In the meantime, city workers have a more practical, and traditional, option for dealing with flood waters--grab what’s valuable and run.

“Whenever it starts to rain really hard, we might be able to get the electronic equipment out before it gets damaged,” he said. “But for that, we have to have enough notice.”

The basin, as city officials and basin neighbors found out the hard way, can fill up with great speed.

The amount of notice needed to disconnect and remove several pieces of electronic equipment before rising waters make the task dangerous might be out of reach during this time of El Nino.

“It’s going to be a long winter,” Bickett said.