415 Seek Federal Disaster Aid; Next Rain Due Tonight

With the next storm poised to strike Ventura County tonight, more than 400 county residents have already filed for federal disaster aid from earlier storms that have caused at least $37 million in damage, officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, work crews raced to avert another potential disaster--draining the lake that formed when a mudslide pinched off a remote canyon three miles north of Ventura--a pool of water that threatens to swamp almost 200 midtown homes.

By Wednesday afternoon, pumps sucking about 13,000 gallons of water a minute from Hall Canyon had cut the size of the lake in half.

But municipal officials touring the area estimated that the 20 million gallons of water that remains is enough to unleash a potentially violent deluge that could flood 61 acres of midtown Ventura with as much as 1 foot of water.

Workers estimated they would need five dry days to drain the lake, which rose about 7 feet during Monday’s rain.

“There’s still reason to be concerned,” said City Manager Donna Landeros, clad in jeans as she climbed mounds of mud to peer into the lake’s murky waters.

“It never has been life-threatening--it’s a matter of minimizing property damage. . . . Every day they have, the better the situation gets.”

The temporary reprieve from the storms could end tonight, with as much as 1 inch of rain expected on the coast and up to 3 inches in the mountains. But meteorologists believe that both tonight’s storm and a similar front expected Saturday night will deal the county only a glancing blow and direct most of their energy toward Northern California.

“You’re still going to see some rain, but compared to what you’ve seen, these storms are turning out to be drops in the bucket,” said John Sherwin, a meteorologist with the private weather forecasting company WeatherData Inc. “It doesn’t look like it will be catastrophic.”

The storm-battered county has already received 300% of its normal rainfall along the coast and sustained damage from Thousand Oaks to Ojai. So far, 415 Ventura County residents have contacted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to request disaster assistance.

That statistic means the county is ranked sixth statewide in the number of people asking for help, although the figure is expected to rise, said FEMA spokeswoman Patti Roberts.

“This is just a slowly evolving disaster,” she said. “We anticipate the rainy season lasting for two more months.”

County officials said Wednesday that so far, owners of 168 homes have reported an estimated $545,000 in damage, a “very low” figure that is expected to rise in the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, damage estimates to public facilities also continue to increase, with Ventura city officials estimating that damage has climbed to $1.17 million.

A detailed list given to federal and state officials outlines damage costs ranging from $40,000 to shore up a slide undermining a Brodiea Drive home to $65,000 for removing debris from state beaches.

Camarillo has reported the most damage to date, an estimated $1.58 million, officials said.

In Thousand Oaks, crews finally opened a closed portion of Moorpark Road on Wednesday afternoon for the first time since Feb. 6. A sinkhole more than 20 feet deep had closed the major north-south artery between Avenida de las Flores and Columbia Road.

Crews are also expected to replace a portion of damaged sewer pipe in Wildwood Park as soon as today. No raw sewage was released, Public Works Director Don Nelson said. Another pipe, patched last week, continues to hold.

Nelson expected that the city would weather tonight’s storm well and that no significant problems would be created for his exhausted crews.

“I could actually sleep well with just an inch of rain,” Nelson said.

Indeed, officials at the county’s Office of Emergency Services are also sounding somewhat blase about the next round of storms.

“We’re at 100% saturation, so anything more we get isn’t going to saturate us any further,” said Dale Carnathan, an emergency services administrator. “The ground can’t take any more so we’ll see more of the same--slides here, there and everywhere, and local street flooding. Same stuff. Different day.”