S.D. County Mopping Up After Big Storm

San Diego County’s battered coastline began to recover Tuesday as high winds subsided and property owners continued to shovel water and remove the debris and seaweed left behind from a two-day pounding.

“We’re definitely in the recovery phase now,” said Steve Danon, operations officer with the county Office of Disaster Preparedness. “We’re putting the pieces back together--cleaning up, drying off, and assessing the damage.”

The City of San Diego announced it would remove the mounds of seaweed that washed ashore onto private property, lest the seaweed rot and become a health hazard.

Disaster officials were busying totaling damage figures, in hopes the county will qualify for state and federal relief. They urged residents to notify their city government of any damage.

And three man-made structures meant to defy the sea in North County--the new Oceanside pier, the new civic seawall in Carlsbad, and the controversial 480-foot private seawall in Del Mar--were hailed as successes for holding their ground during the storm.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard searched for two San Diego-based fishing vessels 110 miles southwest of San Diego, as well as a man reported overboard. The Kitty Lee, with one person aboard, and the Cathryn, with two persons aboard, were last heard from shortly after midnight Monday.

A Sigh of Relief

The Coast Guard suspended its search at approximately 5 p.m. Tuesday but Navy aircraft equipped with infrared equipment were slated to search throughout the night.

A Coast Guard spokesman said it is believed that one of the two boats has capsized and that the man in the water was from one of the boats. The Coast Guard search is set to resume this morning.

Coastal residents from Imperial Beach to Oceanside breathed a sigh of relief as the morning high tide was not coupled with high winds. No further damage was reported.

Winds were a gentle 10 m.p.h. and the crashing waves on Tuesday were picturesque, not ominous. A coastal flood warning was cancelled in mid-morning, although heavy surf warnings remained.

“It was those winds Sunday and Monday that were the killer,” said Bill Wolf, emergency management coordinator for the city of San Diego. “We can take the storms and we can take the surf, but when we get the wind to back them up, that’s the death blow.”

Enterprising San Diegans were quick to turn adversity into opportunity.

Construction and window repair firms distributed handbills in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach offering to do home repair at reasonable prices. One resident put a sign offering to sell his newly-arrived load of seaweed.

In Del Mar, retired actor Don Kennedy was the beneficiary of a wind-borne gift: A restored view of the ocean.

For a decade, through lawsuits and angry exchanges and then a political battle with City Hall, Kennedy had sought unsuccessfully to have his neighbors trim their trees so that he could once again see the ocean. On Monday, he awoke to find the offending trees toppled.

“It was a total gift,” Kennedy said. “I couldn’t be more pleased.”

Others were not as lucky. Seven injuries were reported countywide during the two-day storm, including an Oceanside man who suffered broken ribs.

1983 Storm Was Worse

Damage in the county was put at $6.8 million, including $2.5 million in damage to public property, $4 million to private property, and $320,000 in economic losses to businesses that were unable to open or otherwise lost customers.

By comparison, the storms of January 1983 did an estimated $13.5 million damage.

Damage estimates for the 250-mile stretch of ravaged coastline from Santa Barbara to the Mexican City of Ensenada topped $68 million and continued to climb Tuesday.

In Redondo Beach, the city hit hardest by the surf, damage was estimated at more than $16 million.

Although there was less dollar damage in San Diego County than 1983, there were more customers of San Diego Gas & Electric Co. left without heat or electricity. At the high point of the storm, more than 40,000 customers were cold and dark, 40 percent of SDG&E;’s total.

By late-afternoon Tuesday, the outage number had been reduced to a few hundred, mostly in central San Diego, according to SDG&E; spokesman Fred Vaughn.

On Sunday afternoon, as winds up to 64 m.p.h. howled through parts of the county, the company called in every available maintenance worker.

“At the height we found it was futile to try to fix things,” Vaughn said. “Linemen reported seeing things fly by horizontally and crash into power lines.”

At the Hotel Del Coronado, damage was set at $200,000 to a pavilion used for conventions and large parties.

The San Diego Zoo, which failed to open as scheduled Monday for the first time in its 72-year history, reopened Tuesday but the rhinoceroses, zebras and orangutans were kept out of view because of damage to their enclosures.

Zoo spokesman Jeff Jouett said the zoo suffered greater damage than any storm before, even one in 1980 that paralyzed the county, wiped out telephone service for a week in parts of North County and caused severe flooding in Mission Valley.

“The winds seemed to be twisting trees back and forth,” Jouett said. “It wasn’t exactly a whirlwind but it was a similar effect of pushing things at different angles. It was the worst we’ve ever had here.”

Comparisons with previous storms were common.

“This storm was stronger and fiercer than 1983,” Danon said. “But it just wasn’t as extended. Frankly we got away lucky this time. It centered over us for awhile and left. In ‘83, it battered us for several days.”

The National Weather Service predicted another rainless day for Wednesday, with winds from 10-17 m.p.h. and coastal temperatures upward of 60 degrees. A frost warning was in effect for inland areas.

Camille Spaulding, 33, was surveying the damage to her rented stucco home at 3633 Ocean Front Drive in Mission Beach on Tuesday. Three inches of mud covered her rug and her furniture was soggy.

The front door was torn off its hinges by a relentless wave Monday. Her stereo and personal computer were ruined. Still, her personal papers were intact.

“The important stuff was not ruined, my taxes and my college catalogue,” said Spaulding, a graduate student at San Diego State University.

Like many other beach residents, Spaulding had been caught by surprise by the wind and waves. Her brother, Thomas Kilpatrick, was on the telephone in the living room Monday morning when water shattered the front window.

Mounds of Seaweed

“It just picked up the couch and carried it about 12 feet into the dining room table,” she said.

From Pacific Beach to Mission Beach, city Parks Department bulldozers and private contractors picked up mounds of seaweed--some as high as four feet.

The residents of 3467 Ocean Front Drive, near Manhattan Court, announced on a piece of plywood covering a window: “Seaweed 4-Sale.”

About a half-dozen hired workers had been shoveling four-foot high mounds of seaweed since 9 a.m. Tuesday outside Richard Pick’s six-unit apartment building at 3449 Ocean Front Walk. He was paying them $5 an hour.

Pick wants to get the place clean so that he can rent out one unit for Super Bowl XXII, to be played Jan. 31 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

He said he advertised in Denver and Washington, D.C., newspapers and is asking $100 per night for the apartment.

On a piece of plywood covering a window on a different Mission Beach apartment, someone wrote: “Surfs Up in 1988.”

In North County, rocks were cleared along Highway 101 in Carlsbad; school children visited Moonlight Beach in Encinitas; and intrepid surfers lured by waves up to 10-foot high hit the water off Cardiff.

“Monday was just too radical even for us,” said Mike Jensen, 17, of Olivenhain. “But today, man that’s awesome. Ten-foot high and smooth and long and tubular. You can’t ask for more.”

In Del Mar, no further damage was reported along a row of beachfront homes, some protected by a 480-foot-long seawall that the 4th District Court of Appeal has ordered torn down. Several of those homes had been damaged, but owners said the damage would have been far greater without their rogue wall.

Tom Ranglas, owner of the beachfront Poseidon Restaurant, estimated that his restaurant had suffered $30,000 to $35,000 in damage Monday as waves overwhelmed a deck and hurled outdoor furniture through plate glass windows.

Times Staff Writers Raymond L. Sanchez and Curtis L. Taylor also contributed to this story.