U.S. Aid Sought for O.C. Homes Ruined in Storm

As owners of slide-prone homes in Anaheim Hills packed up their belongings for a two-week absence, state and federal officials on Thursday toured storm-ravaged areas of Orange County, and Gov. Pete Wilson promised to ask President Clinton for federal disaster relief.

In Anaheim Hills, representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Administration and the state Office of Emergency Services surveyed damage on Thursday to determine whether owners of 25 damaged homes and the city qualify for emergency financial help. No decision was reached by day’s end. Residents of those homes and 20 others have been told to stay out of their homes at least two weeks.

At the opposite end of the county in San Clemente, where 40 hillside homes have been declared uninhabitable, city officials said the cost of repairing damage from floods and slides could run into the tens of millions of dollars.

“We are now in a true crisis mode,” said City Manager Michael W. Parness, who led state elected officials on a tour of the damaged city. “The rain without question has been devastating to us. And we expect more problems to surface as time goes on.”

State Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside), who toured the area for two hours Thursday, said the damage was far worse than he had heard. Six of the 40 homes are considered a total loss, while water-soaked ground continues to slip underneath several precariously perched homes.

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words and that’s certainly true here,” said Morrow, as he inspected a restaurant destroyed last week when a flash flood damaged a storm-water channel.

“The damage here has been extreme, and it’s too much for cities and counties and probably the state to handle,” he said. “I’m going to urge Gov. Wilson to strongly push for federal assistance.”

Gov. Pete Wilson already has declared state disasters in 16 counties, including Orange and San Diego, and will ask the Clinton Administration for federal disaster relief for the entire state sometime next week, said Franz Wisner, a spokesman for the governor. Wilson will seek the money as soon as all damage estimates have been compiled, he said.

“As soon as there’s a break in the storms, and after this next series hits (Northern California), we should be able to have a better assessment of exactly how much damage has been done,” Wisner said. “Then he will ask for federal aid for the entire state.”

With federal relief, residents could be eligible for financial help in rebuilding their storm-damaged property.

“A disaster of this size warrants this action. The residents of these areas need all the help they can get,” Morrow and state Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside) wrote Wilson in requesting federal aid.

Seven counties were declared state disaster areas earlier this week, and on Thursday, Wilson added nine more: Fresno, Imperial, Madera, Monterey, San Bernardino, Sierra, Tehama, Trinity and Tulare counties, as well as the city of Fillmore in Ventura County.

In Mission Viejo, repair crews were finally able to shut off the flow of raw sewage pouring into the ocean late Wednesday night.

The spill began at about 3 a.m. Monday when a landslide ruptured a pipeline and it took almost three days to halt the flow because rain-soaked soils made the area inaccessible to heavy equipment. Permanent repairs to the damaged line will take at least a month.

About five miles of beaches from Dana Point south to Avenida Pico in San Clemente will remain off-limits until bacteria counts return to normal, which could take another week. About 6 million gallons of waste poured into Oso Creek, which drains via two other creeks into the ocean off Dana Point.

Meanwhile, in San Clemente, a small overflow at a sewer pumping station forced the closure of about a mile of beaches from the San Clemente Pier south to Avenida San Fernando.

Also in San Clemente, city officials face major work, including repair of slopes above Coast Highway that have caused the major road to be closed indefinitely.

The flood control channel that caused a wall of water to overflow its banks last weekend and wipe out an Italian restaurant and neighboring motel also must be repaired, with the cost probably running over $1 million, City Manager Parness said.

Even though San Clemente has been prone to slope failures in the past, the revenue-poor city had put off many infrastructure repairs hoping for the economy to turn around. But now street cracks are becoming gaping holes and many long-delayed projects must be addressed immediately.

Even worse, the current damage “is just the tip of the iceberg,” Parness said, because some homes can crumble to the ground several months after a hard rain.

“What is in front of us now is truly staggering,” he said.

In Anaheim, a preliminary damage estimate Thursday was approaching $400,000, but city officials expect the total to rise considerably when a more comprehensive review is done. The land around Rimwood Drive, Avenida de Santiago, Burlwood Drive, Pegasus Street and Georgetown Circle continues to slide at a rate of about an inch per day. Since Saturday, the earth has moved as much as 10 inches in some places, causing extensive damage to million-dollar homes and cracking pools, streets and sidewalks.

“It’s still pretty scary out there,” said Anaheim City Manager James D. Ruth. “We’re doing everything we can to stabilize things out there.”

Nine of the 25 damaged houses had what they called “major damage.” Some houses are threatened with falling down a hillside, while others, on flat land, could collapse in saturated earth.

By Thursday night, three pumps were removing 75 gallons of ground water a minute in an attempt to stabilize the shifting ground, Anaheim Fire Battalion Chief Steve Magliocco said.

About eight more wells reaching a depth of 60 feet were scheduled to be drilled, and two or three others will be dug to pump water from a depth of 200 to 300 feet.

Residents of Georgetown Circle were busy Thursday maneuvering moving vans and cars through an obstacle course of maintenance trucks and drilling rigs.

“We’re just trying to move the things we can’t replace,” said Ann Whang, who will stay with her husband at the home of friends.

At least one resident, Darlene Denton, said she was ignoring the city’s request to evacuate and staying put in her million-dollar Tudor-style home. City officials said they were not going to force her to leave the area. “I think they are a little overzealous,” said Denton as work crews drained her pool. “The damage is only here by the pool. It’s not like we’re hanging off a cliff. . . . If I thought there was a valid reason I would be out of here in a shot.”

In Laguna Beach, where three ocean-view houses in the affluent Mystic Hills neighborhood were destroyed Monday in a landslide, an insurance company representing two of the families has hired a geologist to determine the cause of the slide. Geologists have said that 60-year-old pictures show the neighborhood was built on an historic slide site.

Times staff writers Timothy Chou and Matt Lait and correspondents Frank Messina and Terry Spencer contributed to this story.

* STORM-PROOF STREETS?: Officials are resigned to storms causing street closures. B1