Nature puts SoCal on notice

By: JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer | Wednesday, February 23, 2005 12:18 AM PST ∞

It grows easier with each deluge to understand what Noah went through.

The rain has been such that many residents of Southern California are searching, at least in their imaginations, for decent used arks.

Floods rush through. Mud slides. Holes rip open, terrible wounds to the earth. Homes fall down, roads change to rivers, lawns become pools. Lakes climb out of their boundaries like escaped prisoners, free at last.

Lake Hodges, for one, spilled over its dam Monday and sought the low ground, aka the San Dieguito River Valley. It's done it before ---- 1993, 1995, 1998 ---- and has always found its way from Escondido to the Pacific through Del Mar, because that is the lay of the land.

This is not Seattle, but the kind of language floating around San Diego sounds like it, particularly because the worst of the latest storm that struck on Sunday surely contained echoes of a city where the rain never seems to stop.

Phrases such as "road closures," "sandbag locations," "erosion control." The topper on Tuesday was a "tornado watch" for much of North County.

The county's Department of Public Works has a Web site, and there residents could find out where to go to get free sandbags (Ramona, Valley Center and Julian, among others).

Another part of the site refers to the dangers in Valley Center for people "downstream of burned areas." Downstream? Has the Colorado slipped its bonds? Never mind. As the site says, it's all aimed at remaining on the "safe side."

As the weekend became the week, it was clear that Los Angeles and environs had been hit even harder, or with greater cost, by the storms than had San Diego. Four deaths were blamed on the rains. Hills fell away, and rescues from slide-endangered homes were dramatic and frequent.

You have to love Southern California. Its residents just face head-on whatever comes in a non-blustering, West Coast way. Rain? OK, we got your back. Floods? This way, ma'am.

It's quiet, assured and, as it turns out, very efficient, if you are a person who believes what he sees and is convinced by anecdotal evidence.

There was no escaping the pure SoCal beauty of a rescue of a woman from her car. She had somehow driven into a stream that may have been dry as Yuma just the week before, but now was a gully with pretensions. The water came in the windows, and she was up to her neck in it, literally.

Along came a surfer. There he was, blond and tan and all the rest, paddling his board through torrents to reach the woman, and did, and saved her. That is almost the essence of Southern California's response.

The surfboard guy was one example. The deployment of road crews was another. In this area, the crews were on patrol from Saturday afternoon on, and they quietly toweled off North County, so to speak. They stepped in, they reassured, they rescued, they dug, they sawed, they warned, they stayed on the job.

Scattered reports had the crews overwhelmed, but whelmed would do.

Maniacal motorists are also very SoCal, and there were the usual hundreds of accidents. But there were also hints of hope for the motoring mad. At one Escondido intersection, the traffic lights were flashing red in all directions during the storms Sunday. A short in the system, electricity rebelling, something. But there was no panic or impatience. The drivers on all sides treated the crossing as if it were your garden variety four-way stop on a sunny day. Each went in turn, a dance of restrained horsepower with a splash of horse sense.

Contact staff writer John Van Doorn at (760) 739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.

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