Corps Crew Wins Praise as It Ends Work in Laguna

LAGUNA BEACH —  About 350 members of the California Conservation Corps will pack up at noon today and head out of town, taking with them accolades for a job well done.

For the past 33 days, 18 corps crews have trudged the hills, canyons and streets of this coastal resort, engaged in backbreaking work that city officials hope will save fire-ravaged Laguna Beach from another calamity--mudslides. A similar post-fire effort is being waged by the corps at the county’s Ronald W. Caspers Regional Park as well as in Malibu and Thousand Oaks.

After clearing creeks and storm drains of debris, corps members piled 75-pound hay bales on barren hillsides and filled thousands of sandbags, distributing them around Laguna Beach in an effort to prevent mudslides in the event of a major rainstorm.

On Thursday, they conducted what corps leaders described as the single largest operation in the group’s history: a human chain of 175 corps members handing 2,000 sandbags down a 1,000-foot decline in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.

“These are the troops that did the work that had to get done,” said Terry Brandt, Laguna Beach’s director of municipal services. “They have been all over the city. We couldn’t have done this without them.”

Mayor Lida Lenney said she made it a priority to talk to the corps members who were scattered around Emerald Bay, Canyon Acres, Hidden Valley and up and down Park Avenue.

“They put out an incredible effort,” Lenney said. “I was so impressed with the fact that they felt really good about being in our community. It was more than a job, they had a sense of contributing to the community and bringing our city back to life.”

Corps members arrived in Orange County on Nov. 1 to begin the emergency repair work, said Ben Garcia, commander of the Laguna Beach effort and a district director of the corps for 16 years. Many of the crews were taken off normal routines working for Caltrans or for the U.S. Forest Service and relocated to the Orange County Fairgrounds from their Pomona headquarters, Garcia said.

During their stay in the county, corps members’ daily grind began at 4 a.m. when the crews were roused from cots at their bivouac at the fairgrounds for breakfast. They then were trucked to Laguna Beach in their now-familiar blue buses. The workday ended at sundown.

“Sure, it’s a lot of hard work, but it will work out for the best,” said Duane Wilson, 22, a Long Beach native and three-year veteran of the 2,000-member corps launched by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1976.

For Loyshea Rockwell, 18, filling sandbags in her leather boots and tan and brown corps uniform is the road to a career as a nurse. Corps members can enroll in community college classes along with their work duties.

“I can work, get paid and go to college at the same time,” said Rockwell, of Los Angeles. “I don’t really mind getting a little dirty.”

Rockwell, Wilson and Trina Smith, 18, are typical of many young corps members, most of them ages 18 through 23, who have been recruited from all over the state. Wilson saw a story about the corps on television, Rockwell heard about it at a job fair and Smith was turned on to the corps by a friend.

On Thursday evening, tired and dirty but still excited enough to chant slogans and applaud fellow workers, corps members gathered in a large white tent at the fairgrounds for a farewell address by Al Aramburu, the corps’ statewide director.

“You’re the most important ingredient in all of this,” Aramburu told the young people. “Gov. Wilson is very proud, I’m proud--everyone who has seen your work respects it. You’re the reason the CCC exists. Give yourselves a big hand.”

Later some of the young conservation workers gathered in their quarters to pack up belongings and say goodby to friends.

“I have mixed feelings about leaving,” said Mark Stoltz, 22, of San Diego. “I helped save a couple of houses and some roadways. I made a lot of friends.”