Flooding

Rescuers pulled more bodies from swollen rivers as residents started to dig their homes out from the mud after flooding left 240 people dead in Manila and surrounding towns. Overwhelmed officials called for international help, warning that they may not have sufficient resources to withstand another storm that forecasters said was brewing east of the island nation and could hit as early as Friday. Authorities expected the death toll from Tropical Storm Ketsana, which scythed across the northern Philippines on Saturday, to rise as rescuers reach villages cut off by debris.

Tropical Storm Claudette crept up on the Florida Panhandle, dumping heavy rain in some areas. If it comes ashore, it will be the first tropical storm to strike the U.S. mainland this year. Claudette was not expected to cause significant flooding or wind damage. But Tropical Storm Bill was expected to turn into a hurricane today as it moved over warm waters in the open Atlantic. On Pensacola Beach, the National Park Service closed low-lying roads that connect the restaurants and hotels to the undeveloped National Seashore and historic Ft. Pickens.

Councilman Woo, not for the first time, is way off base in his attempt to stick a "black hat" on the head of a legitimate developer who is attempting to develop a 52-acre hilltop parcel in Sherman Oaks. The tentative tract map, was, as you pointed out in your Feb. 3 issue, approved by city officials back in 1982. If a handful of homeowners and a publicity-seeking councilman can stop an already approved subdivision of 31 homes, then the future of Los Angeles housing is in real trouble.

On Oct. 19, letter writer Jim Easton suggested that you print pictures of the effects of the 1982 El Nino on Ventura County. I also live in the South Bank neighborhood of Oxnard and would be interested to see how the area was affected then and predictions on how it will be affected this year due to El Nino. We survived the supposedly 100-year storms over the last few years without flooding. Are we to expect worse this year? PAT KANE Oxnard

Raging thunderstorms that killed six people in Texas continued, spawning tornadoes and torrential rains in the Lone Star State and Louisiana, swamping roads and homes in waist-high floodwaters and forcing evacuation of some people by boat. Flooding and the threat of floods closed schools in the Houston area and in at least five Louisiana parishes. The death toll from three days of severe weather in Texas rose to six when a 41-year-old man died of injuries suffered on a rain-slick Dallas highway Tuesday night.

Now, before the rainy season hits Los Angeles, is the time for city maintenance crews to have work orders to clean out our sewers, which are filled with many years' accumulation of trash, leaves and gunk. While the city's recent blue-stenciled message on most sewers--"No dumping. This drains to ocean"--should help, it won't rid the drains of many years' layers of muck. Should we get heavy rains this season, these clogged sewers cannot carry away the water quickly enough. Street flooding will cause danger to motorists and pedestrians, plus potential backup into some homes.

Re "Taking the High Ground," May 15: I see the Prado Dam pork barrel project is alive again and going full speed ahead, ready to squander our tax dollars on a needless raising of the dam's height. Leading the charge is our memory-impaired county Supervisor Jim Silva, along with various government representatives. In the early '70s, Southern California was in the middle of a multiyear drought. That was at a time when you couldn't get a glass of water at a restaurant, and some cities even passed laws prohibiting people from washing their cars and hosing down sidewalks.

Thank you for continuing to print pictures of bicyclists wearing helmets. Having criticized you in the past for non-helmet pictures, I must acknowledge your attention to this most important area. With all the talk of El Nino and 1982, why don't you show the damage and extent of flooding from that time? We live behind the River Ridge Golf Course and the two landfills next to it and none of that was here at that time, I think. It would be very helpful for all the new residents and those old ones next to the changed landscape to have some idea of what happened then and what may happen now. JIM EASTON Oxnard EDITOR'S NOTE Next Sunday is the final day The Times will publish letters about issues on the Nov. 4 ballot.