Flooding a drain on business

Elia Powers

Rows of sandbags remained stationed like watchdogs on Balboa

Peninsula sidewalks Monday, hours after skies had cleared for the

first time in days.

Some restaurants and shops stayed closed all morning and

afternoon, as owners hired cleaning crews to dry carpets and sweep

entryways. Paper signs placed in windows alerted customers and mail

deliverers to try back on Wednesday.

Slick spots on streets and pockets of puddles were all that

remained from the weekend storm, which left business owners with

worried nights and morning headaches.

About 1,200 sandbags were issued over a two-day period last

weekend, Newport Beach deputy general services director Mike Pisani

said. Store owners and city residents dropped by all weekend to pick

up materials from the facility, he said.

Richard Luehrs, president of the Newport Beach Chamber of

Commerce, said he spent much of Tuesday morning taking stock of the

damage by calling area businesses to hear their flooding stories.

He said he knows from experience that prolonged storms negatively

affect the local economy.

“Customers don’t want to come out in the rain, so business is

depressed automatically,” Luehrs said. “When the tide comes up and

the rain continues, you have flooding, and that adds to the problem.”

If Marie Schock was worried about sustained damage to her boating

retail and service store, her face didn’t show it.

She watched in amusement Monday as her son played a video he shot

of the flooding 24 hours earlier. It showed a layer of water, more

than 5 inches deep, covering the carpeted floor of the family-owned

Schock Boats.

Schock, vice president of the company, said her business lost the

use of its phones and suffered irreparable harm to some computer

systems.

As of late Sunday night, she hadn’t been concerned about the

facility, which sits on the edge of the Cannery Village district of

Newport Beach.

The city’s water pumps were doing their jobs, she said, and the

gate to the Newport Harbor was closed, blocking the rising waters

from pouring out onto the side streets.

But Monday morning, when Schock arrived to the building, she was

greeted with flooding.

The gate remained closed because of an exceptionally high tide,

and gallons of water from neighboring streets flowed toward her

waterfront building.

“The street filled up like a bathtub, and the water had nowhere to

go,” said Schock, who has worked at the facility for 33 years.

The gate finally opened Tuesday morning, and employees attempted

to get the facility back to working order.

Schock said she hadn’t seen flooding this bad in 15 years. Still, she kept her circumstance in perspective.

“Our problems are small compared to what we’ve seen on television

from this week,” she said. “We’re lucky. The city workers did the

best job they could.”

One Newport Beach couple didn’t wait for the city to act.

Dan and Patricia Hilton, who have lived in Newport Beach since

1949 and now reside above Hilton Builders, their Balboa Peninsula

construction company, made the most of their resources during Monday

morning’s flooding.

They grabbed excess sandbags at their construction project sites

and brought them back to their office to block the entryway. The

couple took the leftover bags to neighboring businesses on their

street.

“They were overjoyed when they saw us,” Patricia Hilton said. “We

got [the sandbags] to them faster than they could get them from the

city.”

The couple’s preparation paid off, as they suffered no damage to

their first-floor office. But by 10 a.m. Monday, their street was

under more than a foot of water.

Two cars were stranded on the street before the city closed it

down by mid-morning, Patricia Hilton said.

“Every time a car came by, it created a wake, and water came up to

our door,” she said.

Employees wore trash bags over their shoes and pants as they

crossed the street. Patricia Hilton said the flooding was the worst

she had ever seen, and the company lost at least four hours of work

time.

Around the corner, at Balboa Newport Realty, owner Karly Brown

fielded an endless string of business calls on her cellphone.

Her office was closed all day Monday and well into Tuesday because

of water that seeped into the building. New electrical systems, phone

lines and carpeting are needed before the office is back to its

original condition, Brown said.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this,” she

said.

* ELIA POWERS is the enterprise and general assignment reporter.

He may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or by e-mail at

elia.powers@latimes.com.