Little Incentive to Stay Out of Harm’s Way

SACRAMENTO — Nobody’s safe, it seems. Rich people watch the raging surf smash their beach homes. Hillside dwellers with sunset vistas see their houses mauled by mudslides. Or torched by brush fires. Everyone in the L.A. Basin or San Francisco Bay Area--privileged or poor--is the potential target of a sudden earthquake.

People living from Reedley to Redding on the east side of the Central Valley don’t worry so much about quakes. It’s the roaring rivers cascading from the Sierra that threaten them--especially those struggling on cheap bottom land, maybe in prefabs or trailers.

There also is the flash flooding of coastal streams and urban creeks, the latter swollen with runoff heightened by paving over natural flood plains for housing tracts and shopping malls.

To be a Californian is to live with lurking calamity. And the more Californians--we’re now 32 million, twice that of 1960--the more calamitous.

There’s a familiar pattern: The governor declares a disaster area and the president follows suit. Then billions of tax dollars are poured into helping victims rebuild where nature has just proved it dangerous to live. All too often--as along the Russian River--disaster strikes again, even before the previous rebuilding loan is repaid.

What kind of societal idiocy is this?

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It’s human nature. Animals have enough sense not to repeatedly go into harm’s way. (You don’t see many bucks napping in the open during deer season.) But humans have imagination. We can pretend danger doesn’t exist.

When we don’t protect ourselves and prepare for the certain onslaught, however, nature wins. Now and again it does anyway.

“Sometimes your arms are just too short to box with God and you’re going to get flooded,” says environmentalist Ron Stork, an official with Friends of the River.

So far in the flooding that began New Year’s Day, 46 of California’s 58 counties have been declared disaster areas. Even before the latest storm, there were 20,000 homes destroyed or damaged, $1.6 billion in property damage and nine deaths.

Invariably after a natural disaster, the politicians reconsider land use policy. And politics prevail.

Peter Detwiler, chief consultant for the state Senate Committee on Housing and Land Use, suggested legislators might consider banning certain facilities--schools, hospitals, rest homes, apartments--from areas prone to flooding. He further suggested requiring houses to be raised above maximum flood levels. Also: Denying disaster aid to property that received it before, after a previous flood.

Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) called a committee meeting, at which the special interests quickly dumped all over her consultant’s notions, effectively burying them.

“The California Association of Realtors would find restrictions on development repugnant,” testified the group’s lobbyist, Stanley Wieg. “We’d find restrictions on rebuilding and resale repugnant.”

A lobbyist for builders called the suggested restrictions “simplistic.” He and others also asserted that to deny disaster aid to two-time flood losers would be punitive and cruel.

Afterward, consultant Detwiler explained it this way:

“There’s a tremendous conflict in values. People have a right to the enjoyment of private property. It’s built into the Constitution. The nation was founded by property owners. On the other hand, the Constitution also allows governments to regulate behavior for public health, safety and welfare. That is the police power. After every disaster, we attempt to re-balance those things through the political process.

“It’s very difficult for elected officials to tell homeowners that they can’t go home again and that they have to walk away from probably their biggest investment.”

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But let’s face it, many politicians--especially local pols--are in the pockets of developers.

Liberal Sen. Tom Hayden, who is running for L.A. mayor, clearly is not. He long has argued for more restrictive zoning in hazardous areas--either that or making local governments solely responsible for the disaster aid.

“Does everybody in California think that American taxpayers are going to subsidize our lifestyle forever, that we can just present them a blank check every time we have a mudslide or a flood?” Hayden asks. “It’s not going to happen. The rest of America has troubles too.”

This latest calamity probably will result in more state money for flood mapping. It’s also possible that property sellers will have to candidly disclose flood hazards to buyers. “We know more about used cars than flood plains,” Detwiler says.

So after again paying a very big price we will get, at most, only small change.