For Many, a Watershed Event

The rain that’s been drumming Southern California has forced unaccustomed behaviors on many of the region’s residents, for whom bright skies, dry roofs and ready access to the outdoors are something of an inalienable right.

Those whose homes have been made uninhabitable by water and mud are not the only ones who’ve been affected. The rain has inflicted discomfort in layers, descending from major property damage to significant inconvenience to the kind of low-level stress and boredom that affects nearly everyone.

They also suffer who only cringe at the endless pounding of water on the roofs of their stores and count their business losses in small denominations. Or who are trapped indoors while the kids pace like caged beasts. Or who brave their usual exercise jaunts with Nikes saturated and hooded heads bowed like penitents -- or who feel guilty for not doing so.

At the Home Depot in Glendale on Tuesday, Gilbert Landeros was buying a water pump and gutters for a rental house he owns in Eagle Rock. Landeros, 56, spent $5,000 on a new roof two weeks ago, but the recent rain came before he could install gutters. Without them, water was pooling at the front of the house and flooding the basement.

“We had buckets and got the water out by hand,” he said. “That’s why I’m buying this pump. I’m not doing buckets anymore.”

In flood-prone Seal Beach, Jack Duran, co-owner of Kinda Lahaina Broiler on Main Street, warily eyed a leak in the restaurant’s glass patio roof. “The more we caulk it, the more it leaks,” he said.

Even more worrisome, dinner traffic at his restaurant had dropped to less than half of normal. “It’s really difficult to get people down here after dark and the wind is blowing,” he said.

Duran’s complaint was echoed in small businesses across the region.

At the Bicycle Doctor near Highland Park, employee Joel Valdes, 29, recounted how the store’s roof had sprung leaks in four places, damaging merchandise.

He said the daily stream of customers, ordinarily 25 to 50 strong, had dwindled to 10 and fewer over the last week. “We’ve been closing early, because it’s pointless to be here,” he said.

As if problems at the shop weren’t enough, Valdes has had to contend with storm damage in his Eagle Rock neighborhood, where rain felled trees and overwhelmed storm drains. “Every other street seems to be closed,” he said.

After heavy rains resumed this week, he had to sandbag the back of his home to keep mud and debris away.

Meanwhile, at 3rd and Western in Los Angeles, the rain had made a traffic light go black, further darkening Jae Yi’s business outlook. Yi opened her small store five months ago, selling clothes, purses and jewelry. With no parking available, she relies on walk-in traffic.

“I really didn’t have many customers before, but now it’s getting worse,” Yi said.

With no customers Monday, she’d closed early. Tuesday, only one person came in -- to buy an umbrella.

“I’m worried about it,” she said. “I’m waiting for people.”

As she spoke, the lights went out.

“That’s the third time,” she said, as the rain outside bounced off the umbrellas of passersby.

Creativity at Home

The rain put a different kind of strain on households with children.

Jennifer Griffith, a 35-year-old stay-at-home mom in El Segundo, took a break Tuesday at Under the Sea, an indoor children’s playground in Culver City, where she’d brought her 4-year-old son and 17-month-old daughter.

She has pushed her creativity to the max in the past week, trying to keep the children occupied and content. The three of them potted plants, tidied the house and even dyed pieces of macaroni with the idea of stringing them to form necklaces, “but we didn’t get that far,” she said.

“They really get cooped up when they’re in the house,” she said. “It’s just constant. You definitely need a glass of wine at the end of the day.”

The plight of house-bound parents has been magnified at the area’s elementary schools, where the cancellation of recess and lunch periods has confined all that childhood energy behind walls.

Just before lunchtime Tuesday at Cahuenga School west of downtown Los Angeles, the sky was acting like a schoolyard taunter -- flashing glimpses of blue above the wet asphalt playground. Principal Lloyd Hauske and his staff weren’t fooled. The PA system intoned throughout the 1,300-student school: “We’ll be having a rain-day schedule today. Lunch will be inside. Inside.”

By the time the first lunchtime shift of about 400 pupils was being marshaled in the hallways for the trek across the playground, rain already was raking the campus.

The kids lined up under an overhang, waiting for bean-and-cheese burritos or chicken wings. Beside them, rain spattered off cream-colored outdoor lunch tables. They carried their food to the school’s auditorium/cafeteria.

“It’s not too bad while they’re eating,” explained Hauske, “but when they’re finished, the din rises. That’s when it becomes a test of our ability to stand noise.”

A few miles away, at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic school, teachers were organizing games inside classrooms to make up for the cancellation of recess and outdoor lunch period.

The younger children were engaged in Simon Says, while older kids played Heads Up Seven Up and Silent Ball.

“It works like a charm because the kids have to be quiet,” said Principal Vincent O’Donoghue. “It gives you a good 25 or 30 minutes, which is just about the time you need.”

An Affront to Athletes

Among those whose resolve has been tested are the region’s runners and exercise walkers. In a mostly benign climate, coldish temperatures and pelting rain can almost seem an affront.

The weather hasn’t dissuaded Steven Kates from his daily 7 1/2 -mile run along San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood, to and from the ocean, a routine of his for almost 30 years.

Kates, a 48-year-old personal trainer with a studio in Santa Monica, admits that even he has had to buck up to face the recent conditions.

“This year has been the ugliest since I’ve been in L.A.,” he said. “I love to run, but it’s still hard to get out there when it’s dark and cold and wet. When you get up and it’s sunny and 80, you want to go out and do it. But this year I’ve had to reverse my mind-set, and take on the warrior’s nature.”

He warned that the danger of running in such conditions is overheating, because clothes like the ski hood he favors as protection from cold water hold in too much heat after the body warms.

The rainstorms, on the other hand, have kept Betty Lejue of Capistrano Beach from her thrice-weekly walks, she said. “I haven’t been out for days, maybe even weeks now,” she said. “I feel sorry for people with dogs that have to go out.”

Not that the stormy weather wasn’t attractive to some of the housebound. From high up on the winding road named for the man who brought Owens Valley water to Los Angeles, the city looked like Scotland.

Atilano Sanchez and Ranferi Ortiz, two hotel workers from Guatemala who share a Hollywood apartment, had decided to come to Mulholland Drive for a rare view of the city.

The hills were green, the Hollywood Freeway was running free, and downtown L.A. was about to be enveloped in a quick-moving curtain of rain clouds coming in from the coast.

“We were bored. We were just sitting around the house and I said, ‘Let’s see what it looks like from up there,’ ” said Sanchez. “All this looks a lot better than watching television.”

Down at 3rd and Western, Wilshire Presbyterian Church announced that the title of this Sunday’s sermon would be “Living Water.”

Pastor Chuck Robertson said he planned the sermon two weeks ago, well before the rain, intending to base it on two Bible passages.

“We’ve been getting a lot of living water here,” Robertson said. “Fortunately, I missed most of it.”

Robertson returned Monday from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. “The weather there was great,” he said. “It was like Southern California should be.”

Times staff writers Sara Lin, Claudia Zequeira and Nicholas Shields contributed to this report.