And Now This

By Gregory Jaynes

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON WAS TO be in Los Angeles this week to mark the first anniversary of the Northridge earthquake -- that is, to call attention to the herculean effort made to set things right. Instead he faced natural devastation of a different sort. More than half the state -- the most populous in the Union, the most snakebit in anyone's memory -- is a disaster once again. Ten days of torrents have put thousands of people, north and south, out of their homes, killed 11, ruined crops, closed freeways, played hell.

These are the worst winter storms to hit California in a decade, or 500 years or 1,000, depending upon which expert is quoted. Los Angeles, used to downpours of no more than three-quarters of an inch this time of year, was drenched with 8 in. before clouds let up; bursting drainage systems shot manhole covers skyward like missiles. Whole towns were isolated. One, Guerneville, 65 miles north of San Francisco, was closed to nonresidents as the Russian River rose toward the rooftops, and 465 citizens were airlifted to higher ground. A rural community called Rio Linda, a satellite of Sacramento, was so badly betrayed by a sandy bed called Dry Creek that a survivor named Rose Marie Simmons could only gasp, "It's real sad, real sad, looking at the place where you've been living, gone." Homes became islands in the sunny coastal necklace of glamorous enclaves like Malibu, which was cut off by the closure of the Pacific Coast Highway and canyon passes packed with mud. Santa Barbara's mission-style historical district was a waist-deep gumbo of guck. Dramatic rescues were everywhere on television as heroes dangled from helicopters, plucking the stranded from the water's path. Authorities revised the damage estimates daily: $200 million, $300 million . . . As the floods receded and more storms lay off the coast, the number of counties declared a disaster by the Federal Government rose from 14 to 24 to 34, out of 58. "We'll get through this in good American style," said Clinton.

"Your heart breaks for these folks," said Governor Pete Wilson after touring some of the hardest-hit areas. Earlier, when the rains began to fall on Sacramento, the Governor had been making his second-term inaugural speech. He had spoken of the grit and tenacity with which Californians had overcome one destructive force after another. The venue for the gubernatorial address had been changed from outdoors to indoors because of the weather; meanwhile the true deluge was moving toward California on the wings of a 200-m.p.h. jet stream. Normally, a high-pressure dome off the coast deflects such activity, guarding the state's reputation for temperate days. But the dome dissipated, explains the National Weather Service, and with it went the region's shelter from the storm. That old devil El Nino, the condition that sends warmth and moisture into the air over the Pacific, may have entered that void and so become a menacing contributor to California's extraordinary week.

The one encouraging note was that a new tracking system -- installed during the two years since the last killer flood took seven lives in Southern California and caused $88 million in damage -- gave residents plenty of notice this time, up to 12 hours, and may have kept down the toll in human lives. But little could be done about property; sandbags are only so effective.

"Before, something would happen and people around here would start to get nervous," said Malibu stockbroker David Mizrahi, setting off on foot across a bridge closed to car traffic because of cracks. (If this had been a movie, the sound track would swell about now with the scraping of mud shovels and the rush of tributaries newly sprung to life.) "This time, after going through the quakes and the fires and the other floods, everyone just threw up their hands and said let it happen, we'll deal with the consequences later."

Indeed, on television, for every image of a boat navigating a West Coast street or a floating bathtub full of paddling victims, there was that familiar combative California aplomb, survivors telling interviewers the good still far outweighed the bad. A father of two young boys, asked flatly why he and his family stuck around, said, "Well, we had a beautiful summer." A year ago, author Kevin Starr, responding to essentially the same question after the L.A. quake, said, "Disaster is not an enduring discomfort -- cold weather is an enduring discomfort."

People still looked pretty uncomfortable, however, as the clouds rolled by this weekend. "I have lost everything, I mean a total loss," said Dwane Matekel, a landscaper who had returned to his childhood home in Orange County after life in Los Angeles got him down. "When we were in L.A., my wife's car was broken into, we had things stolen. So I came back here, and then in November 1993, I was staring at a 40-ft. wall of flames. Now this." The fire spared his four-bedroom tract home, but the rains got it in spite of the 4- ft.-high barricade of mud he constructed as the waters rose. He ticked off his losses, saying finally his situation was "like a sinking ship." He picked up a pole with a squeegee affixed to one end and began clearing away mud, his third day of clearing away mud. (In many areas there was nothing to impede the terrible mud slides because the wildfires of 1993 had destroyed all the vegetation.)

If the slogging cleanup required a degree of indomitability, so did reading the headlines in California on Friday. Seismologists have determined that an earthquake even bigger than last year's is simply a part of Los Angeles' destiny, according to stories based on a report in the journal Science. No one can say just how soon, but the L.A. area is overdue for temblors of magnitude 7.5 or greater. That's much more than enough to topple buildings that now meet the area's strongest construction codes. The Northridge earthquake measured 6.7. It killed 61 people and left $20 billion in damage. It was the second- costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, after Hurricane Andrew.

But as Californians looked to the sky this time (as opposed to, say, the ground), they were once more affirming, as Christopher Isherwood advised, that to live there with peace of mind requires accepting the possibility of great reversal. "There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses," the late novelist wrote, "your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it and you will be happy."

By one estimate, Californians have suffered $32 billion in disaster damages just since 1989. Even in an off year like 1991 -- the Oakland fire storm, a deep freeze, a drought -- the catastrophe tab came to $3 billion. Enter this, the first setback of 1995, into the ledger then, and it looks like a drop in the bucket, the past being prologue.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Sacramento, Patrick E. Cole/Laguna Beach, Dan Cray/Malibu and J. Howard Green/Rio Linda