When It Pours, He Reigns : As Flood Control Czar, Bill Reiter Is Master of Disaster

From the outside, the plain stucco building on Douglas Road offers no clue to the machinations within.

But every time disaster strikes, including fires, earthquakes and, in this El Nino year, rainstorms, county officials open the emergency operations center here.

It’s only a small room, a sanctum for officials who coordinate the county’s elaborate system of flood control channels, pumping stations and strike teams. It’s also where Bill Reiter, the county’s flood control czar, takes charge.

He was at the helm during the 1983 El Nino storms, the ’93 Laguna fire and the ’95 rainstorms, disasters that cost taxpayers millions of dollars in public works repairs. As flood control coordinator for the Public Facilities & Resources Department, Reiter’s decisions affect the safety of the county’s 2.6 million residents.

The 57-year-old Reiter, who began as a laborer and worked his way up to his $92,300-a-year job, said he has learned that when something goes wrong in public works, you fix it--fast. Now, if not yesterday.

“The concern is that we have to work around the clock sometimes to patch things up, because if we don’t and there’s a second storm looming out there, we can have serious problems on our hands,” he said.

Case in point: During the Dec. 6 rainstorm, up to 8 inches of rainfall pummeled parts of South County, including Laguna Beach, Lake Forest and Laguna Hills. The big, 32-inch TV inside the storm center with a satellite feed pictured the fearsome storm as it swept across the county. Meanwhile, the county’s system of rain gauges, pumping stations and field inspectors were notifying those inside the center how damage from the storm was developing.

A mobile trailer park in Huntington Beach flooded, forcing evacuations, while several cars with their drivers were swept down a creek in Lake Forest. In San Juan Capistrano, more than 250 feet of damaged concrete lining was weakened along Trabuco Creek. In Lake Forest, heavy erosion along Serrano Creek threatened to topple eucalyptus trees and clog the storm channel. And Santiago Canyon Road in the county’s foothills was under 3 to 4 feet of mud from seven mudslides.

Firefighters and police safely evacuated people from the mobile home park. Motorists caught in the Lake Forest flooding were rescued. But when Reiter heard about the canyon roads and creek channels, he worried that things could get out of hand quickly.

If the mud wasn’t removed from Santiago, the only way into the canyon communities, thousands of residents could be isolated and rescuers would have to “get them out either by helicopter or walk them out,” Reiter said.

The emergency center immediately dispatched backhoes, a scraper and other heavy equipment to the canyon.

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Reiter then focused on Trabuco and Serrano creeks.

“At Trabuco, the concern was that if we didn’t get in there fast, there could be a domino effect and you would have had concrete panels rip out all the way to the ocean,” he said.

As work crews were dispatched, Reiter and other county officials at the center briefed members of the Board of Supervisors who, in turn, declared a state of emergency. With public crews stretched thin, the declaration allowed Reiter to order repairs from private contractors.

“That’s the beauty of having an emergency declaration, I can get a contractor and say, ‘OK, get it done. Now!’ We don’t have any time delays.”

Randy Thompson with West Coast Arborists in Anaheim recalled that when the phone call came from the center, the voice was urgent.

“They asked, ‘How many crews can you get to Lake Forest?’ We had to rally our crews and we sent 15 guys there.”

It was the sort of operation that Reiter relishes, making split-second decisions in an adrenaline-charged environment.

“When Bill gets inside the room,” said Carol Graeber, maintenance manager for the Public Facilities & Resources Department, “he’s all business when it’s critical and work needs to be done.”

Each morning when Reiter arrives at his office, often before 6 a.m., he rushes to check the “QPF,” or quantitative precipitation forecast, bureaucratese for the tip sheet on rainfall.

“It’s what we live by,” he said. “It’s the most significant piece of information I look at.”

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If rain drops somewhere in the county’s 798 square miles, Reiter will know about it. He also wants to know 24 hours in advance if any will drop, so he can, if necessary, deploy work crews to trouble spots. A few hours, sometimes even minutes, can mean the difference between an annoying road closure and a disaster.

“Today? Don’t even worry about today,” Reiter said. “That weather forecast is for tomorrow. It’s going to tell us how we’re going to do.”

Reiter has been with the county for 38 years. He began in a summer job as a high school sophomore knocking down weeds in storm channels in 1958. After attending Orange Coast College, he said, he needed a job to earn money to finish college and joined the old flood control district as a laborer.

That was in the ‘60s, during the county’s construction boom. Thousands of homes were being built, and the county’s flood control system had to keep pace. In four years, Reiter zipped through the ranks from laborer to an operator of heavy equipment, such as bulldozers and the county’s biggest cranes.

“There wasn’t anything in the yard I hadn’t operated,” he said.

Reiter, who also holds a world record for racing small, so-called tunnel-hulled outboards, admits the job has taken him away from his wife, Edie, and their three children too many long hours and nights for him to count.

Near his desk, he keeps a lucky troll doll in a yellow slicker, given to him by his wife after he was hit by a truck during an emergency.

“They took me to St. Joseph Hospital,” his wife said. “I learned that he was wearing one of those slickers, and Bill can get so focused on what he’s doing, you know, that he got out of his truck and was walking across the street and had pulled the hood over him and wasn’t paying attention when the truck came.”

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Profile: Bill Reiter

Age: 57

Hometown: Tustin

Family: Wife, three children

Education: Attended Orange Coast College and joined county Public Works Department in 1958, when it was a flood control district. He’s one of a few top county administrators who worked up through the ranks

On the job: 38 years

Salary: $92,300

Source: Bill Reiter; Researched by DAVID REYES / Los Angeles Times