LV begins to assess the storm’s damage

Mary Manning and Timothy Pratt

Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003 | 11:07 a.m.

The Nevada Insurance Council offers the following tips to homeowners who are trying to protect their families and property after a flash flood:

The city of Las Vegas' preliminary estimates of damage to city property was $1.2 million to $1.5 million.

That did not begin to tally the damage to private property. City officials noted that they had counted 37 homes that suffered major damage and 21 homes with minor damage because of flooding.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman declared a local disaster area and set into motion assessments that could lead to asking Gov. Kenny Guinn declaring this a disaster area.

But Greg Bortolin, press secretary to Guinn, said that federal officials told Goodman the chances of getting a federal designation as a disaster area are slim because the preliminary estimates of damages to public structures, such as streets and bridges are only $1.5 million.

However, the state has a $7.5 million disaster from which the city could apply for aid, state officials said.

Chardonay Way, a street with wind chimes tinkling in the breeze and American flags flying, turned into a raging brown torrent of floodwaters Tuesday afternoon after almost three inches of rain fell within half an hour in some parts of the northwest valley.

Chardonay and Rainy River Road became a sea of mud in seconds, residents said.

Larry McCorvey said he heard a boom as the cinder block wall to the west of his home collapsed.

"The front door flew open and then we heard another boom as the other side of the wall broke open and water began pouring in the back door," McCorvey said.

A wall of water three feet high poured through his two-story home.

McCorvey and roommate Roger Moore tried to slam the front door shut against the flood, but the water swept passed them.

"Next thing I know, it had knocked the refrigerator across the kitchen island and turned our turquoise green carpet a muddy brown," McCorvey said.

As the murky water swirled through the living room, it knocked a 50-inch Phillips television over and washed hundreds of tapes and CDs out the front door. "Some of them still had the plastic wrap on them," he said.

A $1,600 new computer inside a walnut cabinet was inundated, but five wine glasses atop the storage unit were high and dry on Wednesday. Water marks on the wall topped at three feet throughout the first floor.

McCorvey, a 50-year resident, is a part time postal carrier and former cook. His historic cookbooks were pulp.

"I guess we're up the creek without a paddle," McCorvey said. "We're just working people. I don't know what to do first."

McCorvey and his neighbors said title companies asked them to sign a document that said they lived in a "no flood" zone.

Neighbors helped him save food from the refrigerator and two freezers in his garage.

"In my wildest dreams I never would have put things down here if I knew water was coming," McCorvey said.

As the east end of Chardonay, Coates Cobb-Adams, who rents a house, was tearing out carpet and flooring after a drain on the side of the home clogged and a river of mud poured through it.

"A neighbor complained of the smell from that clogged drain," Cobb-Adams said. "I don't know who is responsible for it." On Wednesday he shoveled 18 inches of mud from the house.

Yet Michael Bohan, McCorvey's neighbor to the northwest, hardly had a drop of debris.

"I'm the lucky one," Bohan said.

No one was injured on Chardonay, but Deborah Ballinger felt the power of flood waters.

"I tried crossing the street and it knocked me under," Ballinger said. A friend grabbed her hand, but they both went under water.

"She went under and then we both struggled our way out," Ballinger said, hosing her driveway.

Steve Tryon escorted American Red Cross members Ted Zidenberg and Ronald Yafuso through his home, the floors smeared with mud after soaked carpet and its padding had been removed.

Like others on Chardonay, Tryon, a single dad and a cook at the Tropicana Hotel, has no flood insurance. "I can't go out and pay to clean this up, so I have to do it myself," he said.

Yafuso was impressed with what had been accomplished on the street. "It's remarkable what neighbors have done for themselves," he said.

But the cleanup will take a while, Zidenberg said. "It could take months to assess all of the homes."

Chardonay was not the only place in the northwest with a big job before it. The Circle K gas station on the corner of Rancho Drive and North Michael Way still had its 12 pumps roped off Wednesday morning after the station's floor was covered in mud the night before, but other businesses were thriving in the area.

Larry Acosta sat on the wall on the west side of the station, rolling a cigarette while he waited for his boss at Hollywood Excavating to pull up.

"We're going to give a quote across the street for cleaning up the mess," he said, pointing to the Northpointe Apartments across North Michael.

It was only one of the "three or four companies ... to scrape and wash off the mud" that Cliff Merrill, maintenance manager at Circle K, had hired for the day. Merrill estimated the cost of cleaning up the station "in the thousands."

For those places with flood insurance, business that could help clean up, well, cleaned up, while other businesses and homes took up the cost and trouble.

"Anybody with a hose has work today," Acosta said. He expected his company would charge at least $2,500 for the job of digging out Northpointe, which could take him about eight hours.

Rhine Preas, owner of Rhino's Turf Equipment, had sold three or four chainsaws at $200 to $500 each to "guys cleaning up trees for people." He was on his way to the Las Vegas Municipal Golf Course at Durango Drive to deliver a water hose.

"Getting business off somebody else's hardship is not a good thing, but at the same time, we want to do what we can to help," Preas said.

Then were those who had to clean up.

The Las Vegas chapter of the American Red Cross was recovering from a disaster in its own office nearby at 3672 N. Rancho Drive. Water had entered the front and back doors of the office, damaging floors, furniture and some computer equipment. The cost of the damage had not been estimated Wednesday, but the agency has flood insurance, said Penney Towers, chief executive officer for the organization.

"We hope and pray the insurance covers this," Towers said.

Most of the staff of 11 was trapped in the office until 1 a.m., she said. "We were absolutely stranded."

The organization will continue to make damage assessments to homes in the area throughout the week, Towers said.

Another major nonprofit in the Las Vegas Valley, the Economic Opportunity Board, had its main computer database damaged at its office on Rancho and Gowan Road.

The board, with an annual budget of $56.8 million, runs at least 35 centers in the valley for low-income people to get help with everything from child care to addictions. But it doesn't have flood insurance.

Though area families will still be able to obtain services in those centers, the agency's administrative offices will be closed for the time being, Mark Antaky, risk manager for the agency, said.

Others in the area brought up the subject of flood insurance -- and how it was costing them so much because rates were based on out-of-date maps.

Dean Mierau, half of a husband-and-wife team that owns Education Station Day Care Center at Rancho and Michael Way, said a flood channel was built next to their day-care center and the center itself was built on raised land after federal maps were made of the area. The maps were last revised in 1997 and the center was built a year later, he said.

"So we've been trying since then to get the maps changed and our rates lowered ... which are very exorbitant," he said. Mierau said other area businesses share the same concern.

The True Value Hardware store's manager up the road on Rancho was happy she had flood insurance, however. Nancy MacRae said about 3 feet of water entered the store and estimated that several hundred thousand dollars worth of damage was done to the store's products.

All in all, Tuesday's rains left many in the valley's northwest corner with lots to do, spend or earn, for days to come.

"We'll be busy all week," Acosta said, as he stamped out his cigarette and hopped aboard his company's truck, ready to clean up the mud.

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