Financial impact of Rice Canyon fire coming into focus

By: TOM PFINGSTEN - Staff Writer | Saturday, November 10, 2007 9:54 PM PST ∞

FALLBROOK -- Since the end of the most devastating wildfire in Fallbrook's history, community leaders and business owners have turned their attention to the financial impact of a mass evacuation that left the town empty for a week.

When the Rice fire tore through 9,000 acres in Fallbrook, De Luz and Rainbow last month, it wreaked considerable damage on Fallbrook's avocado industry, burning at least 21,000 trees.

But the disastrous week has left other business owners, too, wondering how much money they and their employees lost because no one was around during the evacuation to buy their wares or order their lunch specials.

Business insurance for tangible losses may not help some merchants recoup missed profits, although commercial insurance sometimes includes "business interruption" coverage, local business leaders said last week.

"No business does well by not having any income during a number of days in a row," said Bob Leonard, executive director of the Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce.

Costs such as rent and utilities "don't stop during those days," he said.

"You still have to pay all those costs, even though you were not taking anything in," Leonard said.

Leonard pointed out that the fire did not do much physical damage to Fallbrook's economy, noting that the blaze destroyed homes and agricultural crops but didn't reach downtown businesses.

"The community is not suffering the ultimate problem of having to rebuild its business base," he said. "So we certainly have a lot to be happy about, considering the threat that we had."

But the effects of what he described as "the very unusual scenario" of an entire town evacuated for a week will leave some businesses staggering, he said.

Exact loss is elusive

Including fire and wind damage to local groves, the losses incurred during the Rice fire in all likelihood will reach millions of dollars, leaders said.

Losses are difficult to quantify, though, because businesses would have to predict how they would have done that week had they been open.

Bob Lucy, co-owner of the Del Rey Avocado packinghouse in Fallbrook, estimated that his business will lose $200,000 in sales because millions of pounds of avocados were burned in Fallbrook by the blaze.

He said the effects of being closed for a week during the evacuation, when some regular customers were forced to use secondary suppliers, will be more difficult to measure.

Meanwhile, Leonard said, insurance companies may not provide much help for lost income and wages.

"All businesses tend to have various types of insurance," he said. "I will be interested to see whether or not a typical commercial insurance policy would cover disruption as the result of an evacuation. Probably not."

Carlsbad insurance agent Robynne Ottenberg, who works for Hartley Cylke Pacific Insurance, said last week that "business interruption" coverage is often written into commercial policies and that evacuations would probably be covered.

"I've filed several claims under that coverage" for clients who were affected by wildfire-related evacuations across North County last month, Ottenberg said.

She said that typically there is no deductible for business interruption coverage and that generally only the first two or three days of an interruption are not covered.

Avocados

For the avocado industry, which was already reeling from several recent crises, the loss of thousands of avocado trees on Fallbrook's hills has been devastating, Lucy said.

"We haven't really figured out how bad it is -- we could have lost 10 percent of our production," said Lucy, adding that he knows of five or six growers who supply his packinghouse who lost significant numbers of trees.

He said, for example, that one of Del Rey's growers in Ramona lost an estimated 1 million pounds of avocados to the Witch Creek blaze.

The local avocado industry was already reeling from an influx of Mexican avocados, devastating crop loss in a wave of below-freezing nights in January, and anticipated 30 percent water cutbacks locked in for Jan. 1.

The fires have added to the woes, Lucy said.

"The freeze was much worse" than last month's fires, he said. "It probably wiped out 25 percent of our production."

He said initial indications suggest that an estimated 10 percent of the local crop was destroyed during the fire -- 5 percent from searing Santa Ana winds and 5 percent from flames.

Some of the trees recovering from the frost damage were hit again, this time by last month's fire. The effects of such a catastrophic series of events will force many small growers out of business, Lucy predicted.

Still, he said, the industry will persist as long as folks want to eat guacamole with their chips.

"The good news for growers is that we have a product that people really want," Lucy said. "There is a really high demand for California avocados. It's not like (avocados) are a commodity that you have to push, push, push all the time."

Down but not out

Along Fallbrook's historic Main Avenue district, dozens of art galleries, shops and eateries were closed during the week of the wildfires, surrendering profits they normally would have reaped during the sales-heavy "holiday" week before Halloween.

Last week, several downtown merchants said they were hurting from the loss of a week's worth of business, but said their troubles paled in comparison to those of customers who lost homes in the blaze.

"We had to throw away a lot of stuff -- it was a week's worth of lost business," said Cynthia Avina, a resident of Temecula and owner of the Yogurt Palace near Main and Alvarado Street. "But it's nothing we can't overcome. Our regulars came back."

Those regulars included 15 to 20 people who lost their homes in the fires -- and those are only the ones she's seen since the flames subsided, she said.

"I heard of people who lost their homes, and my problems don't seem so big any more," Avina said. "It's such a blow to Fallbrook."

She added: "But I think the firefighters did a tremendous job."

Marie Kinnaman, who lives in Fallbrook and owns a boutique called At Home On Main, said that her sales losses were not as steep as some other business owners in town -- particularly those who operate restaurants.

"It wasn't devastating, but (it was) enough to hurt a little," Kinnaman said, adding that she was somewhat concerned that the fire would sweep through downtown Fallbrook, in which case the town's business losses would have been astronomical.

"There were people saying, 'Main Street's burning,' and others were saying, 'No, it's not,'" she said. "The worst part was sitting somewhere else, not knowing how things were here."

One of Kinnaman's full-time employees, 21-year-old Cheyne Dolly, said that losing a week's wages was hard on him.

"I mean, it's a quarter of my monthly income. If you're not planning for something like this, or you don't have savings, it's a burden," he said.

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.