HUNNEMAN: Remembering the Flood of 1980 : John ... - blog

Posted on | January 17, 2013 | Comments

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Flood stories continue here with a tale from a reader of the 1980 flood that caused quite of bit of damage in Lake Elsinore:

In 1980 I was working at Paul J. Niehouse Sr. State Farm Insurance agency on Main Street in Lake Elsinore. At that time, there was no real lake stabilization and the lake level would fluctuate from almost dry to very full. They had installed pumps to bring the lake level up when it dried out but they had no real way of keeping a steady water level. People may not realize this but Lake Elsinore is where all the runoff from surrounding mountains ends up so that in dry years the lake was low and in wet years it filled up.

In 1980 the lake was pretty full due to the fairly heavy rains in 1979. When the big storms of 1980 hit, the lake began to rise at an alarming rate. Many structures were threatened by the rising waters including the Lake Elsinore Marina, personal residences, and campgrounds around the lake.

Because of the runoff, the lake continued to fill even when the rains stopped. The biggest threat, however, was to Lakepoint Mobile home Park that stood where Lakepoint Park is now. Although they didn?t expect the water to actually reach the mobile homes in the park, the septic systems were in danger and when they were destroyed the park would be uninhabitable. The park had to be evacuated. I remember how proud I was that State Farm moved our policyholders out before the situation became critical but some insurance companies waited until the last minute and the Corp of Army Engineers had to move the remaining mobile homes out. Because of the rush, many of them were damaged.

At that time, Lake Elsinore was on the Emergency Flood program with FEMA. On this program you could buy a limited amount of Flood Insurance even when the flooding was inevitable, as long as the property wasn?t flooded for at least 5 days after the policy was purchased. Also, at that time, Mobile home policies had flood insurance included. I spent many nights working an hour or two overtime to get people covered.

Finally, the flood levels were getting so high that the city of Lake Elsinore was actually threatened. The flood waters had already covered some of the roads around the lake including Corydon and Mission Trail.

As a last resort, the Corp of Army Engineers came in and dug a trench right through the middle of Elsinore literally cutting the city in half. The lake drained but to get from one side of the city to the other you had to go all the way around. It took a long time to replace some of the streets with bridges to allow access and they never did replace all of the streets. Before the flood Lakeshore Drive went all the way to Mission Trail. Now you have to go through town to get to the other side at Main Street.

Since then, they have built the levy and the lake seems to be stabilized. I often wonder, however, whether that will really do the job if we have another year like 1980. The floods of 1993 were not nearly as devastating.

Gail L. Freeman

Category: Canyon Lake, Communities, Events, John Hunneman: Southwest Blog, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Murrieta, Perris, Temecula, Topics, Wildomar
Tags: flood

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Source: http://blog.pe.com/john-hunneman/2013/01/17/hunneman-remembering-the-flood-of-1980/

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