Taking Cover

A leaking roof, cited just last week by city building inspectors, forced about 30 people from their homes Wednesday after hours of steady rain doused their apartments here.

The Red Cross was on the scene to help secure temporary shelter for the tenants, whose complaints had prompted the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety to order the landlord to make repairs.

But the citation was ignored, according to chief building inspector David Keim, and the eight-unit apartment building in the 14800 block of Erwin Street was declared temporarily uninhabitable.

“I’m angry at the owner because all he cares about is the money,” said Lucas Zuniga, as he flipped a tarp over the bed in his second-story apartment. “There should have been better maintenance.”

A property manager blamed the lack of repairs on the owner’s insurance company, which he said had advised throwing a plastic sheet on the roof as a temporary measure after it was damaged by a fallen tree.

The insurance company was supposed to send a representative back to the building for a follow-up visit but has yet to do so, said Yoram Sterm of Silver Star Realty, which has managed the apartments since January.

“This is something that we knew was coming,” Stern said in a phone interview, adding he wasn’t surprised when he heard of the evacuations.

No one representing the landlord came to the apartment building Wednesday as its tenants were collecting belongings, according to Keim.

Elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley, the day of rain meteorologists described as a normal spring storm caused scattered flooding, fender-benders, a few power outages and freeway gridlock.

Traffic from Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu Canyon Road, both closed by rock and mudslides, was funneled through Topanga Canyon into the Valley, much of it onto an already-clogged Ventura Freeway. PCH and Malibu Canyon were to remain closed until further notice.

The California Highway Patrol received reports of some 280 freeway accidents countywide between 5 and 9 a.m., about seven times higher than normal, said CHP Officer Ernie Garcia.

Rapidly rising water prompted closure of Sepulveda Basin as a precaution.

Flooding also forced temporary closure of three lanes of the northbound Golden State Freeway north of Lankershim Boulevard in Sun Valley, and between Burbank Boulevard and Hollywood Way in Burbank. And a jackknifed big-rig shut down another section of the Golden State Freeway just north of Balboa Boulevard in Newhall Pass, Garcia said. No serious injuries were reported.

Forecasters predicted rainfall would taper off to showers overnight with sunshine breaking through the clouds by this afternoon.

There could be more rain and showers on Saturday from a storm building in the Gulf of Alaska, said John Sherwin, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc. The weekend storm is expected to usher in temperatures on Sunday and Monday about 10 degrees lower than the normal highs in the low to mid-70s.

But the rain Wednesday--which dumped 1.81 inches at the Los Angeles Civic Center, 2.24 inches in Chatsworth and 1.83 inches in Woodland Hills--caused the greatest heartache in Van Nuys. There it left 2.29 inches and eight soaked apartments.

“I don’t have a mattress bed now,” Zuniga complained. “I have a water bed.”

The heavy rains started penetrating the apartment building around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, Zuniga said, adding that it was the third time water had leaked into his apartment since he moved in.

Throughout the night, Zuniga tried to catch the flow of water by placing paint buckets, skillets and pans under leaks in the sagging ceiling. It was clear by morning he was losing the battle: His once cozy apartment was transformed into a soaked disaster area, full of saturated couches and ruined appliances.

Resident Charlene Griffin had a hard time deciding what to take and what to leave. Stuffed plastic grocery bags, backpacks and milk crates lined the floor of her apartment, which she shares with her husband, three children, a dog, a cat and an iguana.

“I’m stuck, I don’t know what to take,” Griffin said. “I know I have to take Little League stuff, clothes, shower stuff, but what else?”

Griffin said she and her family would be staying at a Red Cross-designated hotel for an indefinite period of time. Daisy, the dog, and Socks, the cat, were going to a special shelter, while the iguana went to a friend’s house.

For Adan Corea, another displaced resident, there wasn’t much to take because water had drenched almost everything inside, from the sofa to the carpet. Even things lifted onto chairs were soaked, and parts of the kitchen wall had fallen away from water saturation.

“The clothes are no good, but I take tools because I have to work,” said Corea, a mechanic.

Corea, who lives in the ground-floor apartment with two other adults and five children, said his was one of the worst hit. He and the others loaded up the back of his truck with whatever was salvageable.

As they stepped inside on the carpet to haul things out, brown puddles pooled around their feet. Neighbors, including Griffin, were in and out using Corea’s phone because it was one of the few that still worked.

“I just don’t know what’s going to happen now,” Griffin said.