After two long nights battling to save his citrus and avocado crop from a record-setting deep freeze, Jim Churchill left his Ojai farm at 4 a.m. Sunday and headed for the Hollywood Farmers Market, hoping to find customers for his surviving Pixie tangerines.
With the temperature already in the 20s and continuing to drop, the news from his and other orchards was not good. As much as half a billion dollars' worth of California oranges, lemons and other produce was probably ruined, an industry spokesman said.
"We lost our entire crop of avocados, five acres," Churchill reported at midday, trying to focus on the brisk business at his fruit stall near Ivar Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. "This was going to be our first good harvest in seven years ... then it all froze."
The dry, biting cold front iced over freeways, drove nearly 1,000 people into Southern California emergency shelters, left one rescuer hospitalized and shattered decades-old weather records from Los Angeles to Lancaster.
But growers like Churchill suffered the most.
Initial estimates by representatives of the state's $1.3billion-a-year citrus industry placed losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
"We have suffered significant damage," said Joel Nelsen, president of Citrus Mutual, a Tulare County-based trade group, comparing current damages with a $700-million crop loss in 1998.
Thousands of California growers were out Sunday cutting fruit and assessing spoilage, he said. "We are finding good fruit. We are not dead in the woods yet."
Agriculture officials, mobilized by a state of emergency declared Friday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, were scrambling to calculate losses and provide farmers and affected communities with federal disaster assistance, said Greg Renick, spokesman for the governor's Office of Emergency Services.
The potential effect on prices and availability of fruit was not immediately clear. One state official said freeze warnings and quick harvesting by farmers may have helped soften the blow.
"Right now there's sufficient inventory" in packing and storage houses, said Nancy Lungren, deputy secretary for public affairs for the state Department of Food and Agriculture.
Most Southern Californians had to endure little more than a "brrr"-factor of inconvenience Sunday. Temperatures continued to dip for up to an hour after sunrise in many areas, setting record lows under incongruously brilliant skies.
