Flood Victims in Loma Linda Still Waiting for Financial Aid

Ever since the heavy rains that hit last December flooded streets and caused mud to seep down into residential neighborhoods, Loma Linda officials and residents hold their breath anytime rain starts to fall.

Luckily, there is no cause for concern in the forecast. At least in the near future.

This is encouraging news to businesses and residents that still have not recovered from the flooding nearly three months ago.

According to the National Weather Service, rain is expected to develop today in the late afternoon into evening, starting off light and then getting heavier. That storm is likely to result in just 1/3 inch of rain, and will end Friday morning. A smaller, weaker system is set to come through Saturday night, resulting in less than 1/4 inch of rain.

In December, heavy rains caused mud and debris from the city’s south hills to pour into plugged detention basins, causing water and mud to overflow and flood streets. According to Debra Kreske, emergency service coordinator with the Loma Linda Fire Dept., Loma Linda Public Works has been wanting to clean the detention basins out for awhile.

“They have to wait until it dries out in order to clean it out,” she said. “They have removed a lot of the water with pumps to make more room in the basins to fill out with some of this water (from the incoming rain). And of course we hope that there are not huge landslides or any type of mudslides up there going on.”

One business, Plaza Mini Storage on Mountain View Avenue, was severely impacted by the December storms. Mud and flooding caused workers to have to work on Christmas Day and New Year's Day to clean up the mess. Owner Denny Geiler said that so far, nothing like what happened last year has occurred again.

"We're back in business," he said. "We're very fortunate that the last rains have been nice to us."

The National Weather Service works with the county, and the county works with cities to warn about any heavy rains. For last night’s storm, and the storms coming up, there have been no urgent notifications.

“If they do, we will be out on stand by, but public works is very good about keeping an eye on the basins and trying to clean out everything they can at this point,” Kreske said. “We did not bring any extra personnel in because it does not look like there’s going to be that much rain. It looks like its going to go on through the weekend but they’re not saying a significant amount of rain like multiple, multiple inches like we had in December.”

On January 26, President Barack Obama signed a declaration of a major disaster for the area, and ordered federal aid to supplement the state, tribal governments and local cities hit by the storm. Up to 75 percent will be paid by the federal government, with the county paying for a portion of the remaining 25 percent.

The city is working with both FEMA and CAL EMA on reimbursement for losses from the December rains, including debris removal, emergency protective measures, and overtime. The city isn’t close to an accurate number on the damages, but a rough estimate places it at close to $1 million, including private residential damage that will not be part of the funding.

“I would say we’re in the middle of the process,” Kreske said. “You have to pull a lot of information for each of these projects to be able to identify where the money was spent and what the costs were. They are very particular, very careful with everything. We have to back everything up when we give them any information. You have to show who worked on it and if we contracted anybody. We have to give all the information for the contractors.”

If previous emergencies are any indication, they’ve got a long way to go.

“We had a small project in January 2010,” Kreske said. “There was a disaster back then. We only had $15,000 or $16,000 worth of damage. It took the agencies months to get it back to us.”

The city is going to see if they can apply for mitigation funds, which is separate from the reimbursement.

“That’s an additional pot of money that will available that we can apply for to be able to enhance some of the systems that we have,” Kreske said. “Maybe we want to apply so we can enhance some of the systems that we have. Maybe we want to build onto the basins somehow. We can apply for mitigation funds for that. Not that we’ll get the funding, but we can at least apply.”

Gina Tenorio contributed to this report.