Westerly Pacific winds, with a dose of El Nino’s black magic, produced a series of violent storms that washed over the coast in quick succession. By the weekend the floods had killed at least 11 people, several of them struck by falling trees whose roots were loosened by the flood waters, and property damage approached $200 million. About 3,000 people were homeless. Meteorologists predicted more heavy rains through Sunday.
But even then, the storms’ damage won’t approach the havoc caused by last year’s earthquake, which killed 61, caused $20 billion worth of damage and left 25,000 homeless. Before that, in 1993, wildfires roared across southern California, causing mudslides that smacked Malibu. In 1992 came flood, earthquake, fire, and the Rodney King race riots. The Bay Area’s 1991 fire and 1989 earthquake were among the century’s worst.
On Monday, Gov. Pete Wilson cut short his inauguration party in Sacramento when flood waters started filling up the capitol’s basement. It wasn’t the first time the weather had confounded his politics. A leading champion of freeing states from the grip of the federal government, he has had to importune Washington for money 12 times since taking office. Last week President Bill Clinton declared 34 counties federal disaster areas, making them eligible for emergency aid. Wilson’s spokesman, Paul Kranhold, said: “Disaster relief is a proper role for the federal government.”
No one was hoping more fervently for a government bailout than Orange County, which went bankrupt in a risky investment scheme last year. Now some wary contractors there are refusing to help rebuild after the floods. Rick Schooley, a supervisor in the county public-works department, explained: “We owe them money. Who can blame them?” The Orange County Board of Supervisors will need millions of dollars from Washington to cover repairs.
Meanwhile, Californians continued their own bailout efforts. At the Food Mart in Guerneville, employees scraped frozen mud out of freezers full of Haagen-Dazs bars and Eskimo pies. Winemakers in Sonoma and Napa valleys began the slow cleanup of sodden trellises and broken irrigation systems. “We had whitecaps at the vineyard,” said one owner. (Prices for wine probably won’t rise much, since the rains struck in the dormant winter season.) Then on Thursday, two studies published in the journal Science predicted that future jolts in southern California will likely be more serious than previously thought – possibly as high as 7.5 on the Richter scale. John Cosentino, owner of Cosentino Florists in Malibu, wondered: “Couldn’t they give us some encouraging news for once?”
PHOTOS: The river wild: A homeless man is pulled to safety from the rain-swollen Ventura River; as more foul weather bore down on the coast, a cleanup crew in Malibu dug out a car buried by mud
PHOTO: Wet pickup: Rescue in Santa Clarita
MAP: California: Dealing with the Deluge; Rivers from north to south overflowed their banks as successive storm fronts blew in from the Pacific.
