Droughts Southern California

The killer drought arrived after two years of rain, striking with the wallop of a lethal blow. Heavy rains had prompted the area's cattlemen, buoyed with confidence by years of abundant, water-soaked pastures, to overstock their ranches. But two months of dryness were followed by a third, then another, and another. Soon, Southern California was caught in the middle of what some historians labeled the Great Drought. The year was 1862.

Government forecasters are detecting the possible return of La Nina, the weather pattern associated with the gloomy June fog in Southern California and persistent droughts throughout the area. La Nina, which means "The Little Girl" in Spanish, is an abnormal cooling of water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.

Heavy brush resulting from El Nino rains last year, followed by cool dryness this year, have created ideal conditions for big fires in the 1999 season, authorities said Friday. Usually the hills that ring the San Fernando Valley are as green as Ireland this time of year--moist and lush from winter rains.

The San Diego County water board voted Thursday to file a lawsuit to overturn a half-century-old regulation that gives Los Angeles the right, during a drought, to deprive San Diego County of more than half of its water supply. After griping about the issue since 1951, the San Diego County agency has decided that it cannot plan its future with such uncertainty about water.

Orange County Fire Capt. Joe Kerr snapped off a dry, brittle branch from a laurel sumac bush and declared it a foreboding sign of the fire hazards that lurk in the county's drought-stricken hills and canyons. "If we go unscathed this year and don't have a major fire, it'll be a miracle," he said. "The bottom line is that the hills are going to burn. It's not a matter of if , it's a matter of when.

Southern California's largest water agency has annexed thousands of acres of mostly dry hillside into its six-county service area and agreed to supply water to tens of thousands of new homes and businesses--even as its water supplies have dwindled during five years of drought.

The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District will try to survive the drought by refusing to accept new customers, casting doubt on the fate of many proposed developments in the southwestern San Fernando Valley. Faced with a mandatory 17% cutback ordered by the Metropolitan Water District, which provides the local utility's supply, Las Virgenes directors voted this week to provide water only to existing customers and to new ones who received commitments before Monday.

Teams of firefighters fanned across the parched hills and canyons of Orange County Wednesday, as Santa Ana winds gusted to 69 m.p.h.--heightening the potential for a fire disaster. The season's first "red flag" warning was declared by the Orange County Fire Department, which automatically dispatched roving fire inspectors, ordered strike teams on standby near Irvine Lake and began assembling a brigade-size crew of firefighters and equipment.

"They're not creatures you can fight--they're elemental--an 'act of God!' Ten miles long, two miles wide--ants, nothing but ants! And every single one of them a fiend from hell; before you can spit three times they'll eat a full-grown buffalo to the bones. . . . " Leiningen grinned. "Act of God, my eye!"

Heavy brush resulting from El Nino rains last year, and cool dryness this year have created ideal conditions for big fires in the 1999 season, authorities said Friday. Usually the hills that ring the San Fernando Valley are Ireland-green this time of year--moist and lush from winter rains.

Heavy brush resulting from El Nino rains last year, and cool dryness this year have created ideal conditions for big fires in the 1999 season, authorities said Friday. Usually the hills that ring the San Fernando Valley are Ireland-green this time of year--moist and lush from winter rains.

Heavy brush resulting from El Nino rains last year, followed by cool dryness this year, have created ideal conditions for big fires in the 1999 season, authorities said Friday. Usually the hills that ring the San Fernando Valley are as green as Ireland this time of year--moist and lush from winter rains.

Alex Nguyen begins his workday by counting the dead mice in a San Clemente warehouse. "It's something to talk about at lunch," Nguyen says wryly. The daily toll has risen as high as 13 but lately has been in single digits since the company where Nguyen works, C&E Vision Services, called in the experts: Mission Pest Control in Laguna Hills.

While recent rains may have done little to ease the drought, water officials say South County communities will profit simply because less water is being used for irrigation. "It's hard to measure (the benefit of the storms), but irrigation consumes almost 50% of the water supply," said Jack Foley, general manager of the Moulton Niguel Water District, which serves about 120,000 people in Dana Point, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo and Mission Viejo.

Teams of firefighters fanned across the parched hills and canyons of Orange County Wednesday, as Santa Ana winds gusted to 69 m.p.h.--heightening the potential for a fire disaster. The season's first "red flag" warning was declared by the Orange County Fire Department, which automatically dispatched roving fire inspectors, ordered strike teams on standby near Irvine Lake and began assembling a brigade-size crew of firefighters and equipment.

Donald A. Pierpont sees more than natural beauty when he looks up into the mountains that rim the San Fernando Valley. The Los Angeles County fire captain sees what he calls "the prescription for disaster." It is the gray color of brush he sees that bothers Pierpont the most. Spreading amid the brown-and-green vegetation is the ever-increasing amount of gray--dead vegetation that he said could help fuel a fire as disastrous as the one that ravaged the Oakland-Berkeley area last week.

While recent rains may have done little to ease the drought, water officials say South County communities will profit simply because less water is being used for irrigation. "It's hard to measure (the benefit of the storms), but irrigation consumes almost 50% of the water supply," said Jack Foley, general manager of the Moulton Niguel Water District, which serves about 120,000 people in Dana Point, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo and Mission Viejo.

The city's Water District Board of Directors has asked consumers to voluntarily limit their water use because of the drought. The suggestions include: * Plants should be watered only between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. and no more than every other day. * Property owners should install water-saving shower heads. * Dishwashers and washing machines should be turned on for full loads only.

Argentine Ant (Iridomyrmex Humilis): Color: Dark brown to brownish-black. Size: Medium by ant standards, about 1/16 to 1/8-inch. Description: Single segment connects thorax with abdomen. Strong jaws for carrying food back to the colony; is capable of biting. Does not have a stinger. Climate: Prefers cool weather. Will move into house for protection from rain. Habitat: Under stones, in sidewalks, at base of trees and posts. Does not require hard dirt for nest.

How bad have the ants been lately in Orange County? So bad, quips James Bone of Mission Viejo, that his teen-age daughter recently refused to go back into her room until he promised to spray the critters from her closet. "The place was just overrun," recalls Bone, 49, an accountant. "Then when you think you've got 'em licked, they find a new way to get wherever they need to go to find food and water. . . . It's a continuing battle."