Flooding Forces Residents From Mobile Home Parks

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  In an empty clubhouse at the Del Mar Mobile Estates, Pat Brown slouched in a fold-out chair, looking like she had been hit by a storm.

“We expected it to be bad, but we didn’t have a clue as to how fast the water would rise,” said Brown, whose mobile home park was devastated by an El Nino-related storm 15 years ago. The muddy water, which at its worst was chest-high, again had churned and eddied through the neighborhood Saturday, swallowing planters, lava rocks and debris. It pushed aside patio furniture, uprooted porch stairways and tore away the sidings of trailer homes.

As the rain pounded the neighborhood, which is partly below sea level, residents frantically sandbagged. But “the water was so swift that [the sandbags] floated away as fast as we put them down,” Brown said.

The water had risen by about a foot every 30 minutes from about 6:30 to 8 a.m., stirring fear in the mobile home park, which has many senior citizen residents. Among them are a woman who just had hip replacement surgery, a cancer patient and a paraplegic.

The managers of the park at Brookhurst Street south of Garfield Avenue had had a plan: If they saw water rise to a dangerous level, they would call residents, who were to grab their packed bags and come to the clubhouse, which is on higher ground.

But when the water rose, Brown said, she couldn’t dial fast enough; by about 8 a.m., it was too late for some residents to leave safely.

Lenore Tribble, who turns 82 today, said that by the time she received a call, her back steps had floated away and she couldn’t open the screen door.

By the time firefighters arrived with an inflatable raft, she was on her couch to escape the ankle-deep water.

“With each step on the carpet, it sunk about 3 or 4 inches,” said Tribble, whose home also was damaged in 1983’s storm. “My carpet was floating.”

Nearly all of the 300 residents at Del Mar were evacuated, and scores more were rescued from the adjacent Brookfield Manor Mobile Homes park, officials said. Rancho Huntington Mobile Park also experienced some flooding, but most residents there were able to return to their homes within hours.

Anne Garcie, 50, said she got in a dinghy with rescue workers and helped look for others who needed assistance.

“We were going from house to house--the elderly, the sick and the diabetics. They were in a state of panic; we had to get them out as quickly as we could.”

One resident, who is blind, refused to leave, Garcie said. Rescuers returned with a four-wheel-drive truck and carried her out.

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Dozens of rescue workers helped about 90 residents from the two hardest-hit mobile home parks leave the flooded area via inflatable rafts and other boats, including an 18-foot catamaran designed for flood rescues.

Rescuers waded through the water and towed the crafts with ropes around their shoulders, because using boats with engines would have created waves that might have damaged the homes further, said Steve Reuter, a marine safety officer.

Greg Lopez, a Huntington Beach firefighter pulling a 48-hour shift, said most evacuees had their bags packed. But some were caught unprepared and had to leave with only the clothes they wore.

Huntington Beach city officials said they believe the flooding at the parks was caused by older pumps that could not handle the volume of rain.

Deputy City Administrator Rich Barnard said the pumps are owned by the parks and are used to move water from low-lying areas on the property into the city’s pumping facilities.

“We’ve determined that these private pumps were not the most efficient and couldn’t keep up with the water,” he said. “There was more water than the pumps could handle.”

Officials also disputed some residents’ contention that faulty city pumping stations played a role in the flooding. The 1983 storm caused 17 flood-control channels to fail, swamping 1,000 homes in Huntington Beach and surrounding communities and resulting in $48 million in damage.

On Saturday, the city’s pumping stations were operating during the downpour, city officials said. Electrical problems occurred at one station, but workers made repairs and brought it back in service, Barnard said.

But the rain was so intense that certain areas were bound to be flooded. “When you have 4 to 5 inches of rain in a small period of time, that’s just a lot of water,” he said. “I think our system has fared well under the circumstances.”

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Since 1983, nearly $50 million has been spent to widen and pave several of the most troublesome channels in the county, including a few around the site of Saturday’s flooding. But city officials said the improvements were not enough to prevent Saturday’s flooding because more work needs to be done.

Authorities estimated that 70 mobile homes suffered flood damage.

Mary Payan, 62, who said she had just spent thousands of dollars securing her mobile home at Rancho Huntington, spent the afternoon worrying how she might find the cash to repair the damaged siding.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have no more money,” she said.

Tribble sat in the emergency shelter at Sowers Middle School on Indianapolis Avenue and worried what the storm will take from her. She had not been home and didn’t know the extent of the damage.

“Last time, it took my car. I had to buy another one,” she said. “Each time, you lose a little bit.”

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Shelby Grad.