O.C. Lacks Cash for Rain Repairs : Storm damage: In the wake of bankruptcy, contractors are wary to perform work. The county will seek an advance from state and federal governments.

With a new storm threatened this weekend and rain-soaked residents still struggling to dry out, Orange County officials said Wednesday the financially troubled county must seek advance payments from the state and federal governments before much storm damage can be fixed.

Still reeling from the recent bankruptcy, the county is now unable to guarantee wary contractors and suppliers that it can pay for at least $25 million in repairs to flood control channels and other facilities damaged in nearly a week of torrential rains, officials said.

And without those assurances in writing, many contractors have told the county they cannot, or will not, perform the work.

“They’re gun-shy right now and I can’t blame them,” said Rick Schooley, supervisor of planning, scheduling and procurement for the county’s public works operations division. “A lot are just reluctant to deal with us, understandably.”

Both the state and the federal governments have declared disaster areas in large portions of flood-ravaged California, including Orange County, which on Wednesday raised its estimate of the storm-related damage to public facilities to $25 million. The figure is expected to rise still further when cities in the area complete their damage estimates.

Across Orange County on Wednesday, weary residents and county disaster officials alike heaved a sigh of relief that a storm expected to arrive during the day amounted to no more than showers.

Forecasters also predicted a gradual drying trend for the next two days but warned that the respite is likely to be followed by yet another storm, beginning Saturday.

“Right now, the Saturday storm is not as big as (Tuesday’s), but it does have the potential to strengthen,” said meteorologist Dean Jones of WeatherData Inc. “It has a lot of moisture with it and could have the potential for another inch or two” of rain for Orange County.

Already clear, however, was that Tuesday’s rains had wreaked new havoc across the battered county, forcing evacuations in two cities and sending a river of mud-laden water into downtown businesses in Laguna Beach, the latest in a series of disasters afflicting the picturesque coastal village.

The storm also brought heartache to two families, claiming lives when it swept away an 11-year-old boy and a U.S. Marine officer, in separate incidents.

The child, Cary Dean Burlew of Mission Viejo, disappeared after he lost his footing while attempting to cross rain-swollen Trabuco Creek by rope, accompanied by two adult friends. Ninety minutes after the boy was swept away, firefighters and swift-water rescue teams found his body inside O’Neill Regional Park just east of Mission Viejo.

Officials said Burlew had been with friends who were test-driving a new four-wheel drive truck on the canyon’s muddy back roads, but the trio was unable to cross the creek to get back. The driver, 25-year-old William Harris, and Timothy Vincent Brom, 44, then tried to ferry the boy across by holding onto a rope that had been thrown across by other off-road enthusiasts.

But the rope snapped and Burlew was unable to hang onto the two men, who both tumbled into the water as well. Harris suffered a broken leg during the incident, and Brom escaped with minor injuries.

At Camp Pendleton, officials said the body of Lt. Col. Harry M. Murdock, 43, was found in San Onofre Creek early Wednesday. He was swept to his death Tuesday afternoon as he tried to find a safe spot for a group of 79 Marines to cross the swollen creek.

The Marines had been in routine infantry training at Combat Town, a facility separated from the remainder of the base by the creek.

A search party numbering about 200 scoured the creek bed, finally locating Murdock’s body at 10 a.m. Wednesday about four miles downstream from where he had fallen into the water, said Lt. Douglas Constant, a base spokesman.

Marines who were with Murdock saw him standing waist-deep in the creek when the river bottom apparently shifted and the roaring waters swept him away, Constant said.

“It was very swift-moving water,” he said.

Officials said the incident is under investigation.

In Laguna, meanwhile, residents and owners of businesses in the hard-hit downtown and canyon areas struggled to dig out Wednesday from under a blanket of earth and debris left by the latest storm.

In a tedious repetition of last week, merchants spent the day hosing and shoveling several inches of mud from their shops and businesses. Several in the downtown area also said they planned to try to persuade city officials to take action to prevent similar occurrences in the future, perhaps by cutting a culvert through Laguna’s popular Main Beach Park to allow floodwaters to reach the Pacific more easily.

In Laguna Canyon, residents cleared debris and erected earthen berms to try to guard against further flooding. Ruined furniture and appliances stood scattered by the side of the road.

By late Wednesday, Coast Highway in Laguna was reopened to southbound traffic only. City officials said the northbound lanes could be reopened this morning.

Laguna Canyon Road also was expected to remain closed in both directions until at least this morning.

In Buena Park, residents who had been forced to evacuate an area near the Fullerton Creek flood control channel returned to their homes Wednesday, many collecting a few belongings and leaving again, unwilling to stay nearby while rain was in the forecast.

During pauses in Wednesday’s drizzle, Anjie Villalobos returned to her apartment on Western Avenue near Melrose Street to pack everything up until the situation is clearer.

“My apartment is bare bones,” said Villalobos, 24, who rented a small truck and spent the day packing up “the furniture, the TV, the works.” She said her possessions will be stored until she is certain she can return safely to her home.

Nearby, county and utility workers toiled to repair storm damage to the flood control channel under Western Avenue at 11th Street and to move a damaged utility pole that threatened to fall.

Water quality officials said Wednesday that the latest storm also caused partially treated sewage from city ponds in Corona to overflow into the Santa Ana River, which traverses Orange County on its way to the sea.

Gerard Thibeault of the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board said he will seek an enforcement order requiring Corona officials to remedy the situation.

“It is a serious problem for us,” said Thibeault, who noted that the river is used for fishing and swimming.

Meanwhile, officials heading the disaster relief effort said the county had never before been forced to appeal to state and federal officials for “upfront money” on expected disaster relief funding.

“We’ve never had to ask for this kind of money before, but we sure need it now,” Schooley said.

But in a meeting Wednesday with representatives from the state Office of Emergency Services, county officials asked that at least a portion of the money that it is expected to receive in disaster assistance be given in advance, said Bill Reiter, public works operations manager.

“We couldn’t get a commitment today. But . . . the folks we met from the state said they would like to cooperate with us, knowing that cash flow is a real problem for us right now,” Reiter said. “They felt they might be able to work with us to get us upfront money in the neighborhood of $3 to $5 million.”

The state, in turn, would pass the request on to the federal government and act as a conduit for federal relief for the county, he said.

The path for such assistance was eased later Wednesday when the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which broadened its earlier flood disaster declaration to include assistance to governments trying to cope with washed out roads and damaged storm channels. Earlier, the agency had approved assistance to the owners of private property.

“As of Wednesday, public assistance has been included for those 24 counties, including Orange County, that were originally declared a disaster area by President Clinton,” said Alexander Newton, a FEMA spokesman in Pasadena.

Even so, some repair work is so crucial that the county must find a way to move forward on it without waiting for a commitment from state and federal officials, Reiter said. For example, the county is already seeking bids to fix a collapsed section of Beach Boulevard and the underlying Fullerton Creek flood control channel--work that may cost more than $1 million, he said.

“We will have to try to get money to go forward with that one right away,” Reiter said, noting that the thoroughfare has been closed between Orangethorpe and Magnolia avenues since it was undermined in the Jan. 4 flooding. “We’ll have to try to get some funding from the (Bankruptcy) Court.”

But other storm repairs cannot progress until the county is able to ease the concerns of some of its regular suppliers, several of whom have been unable to collect payment from the county since before the bankruptcy declaration Dec. 6, officials said.

Employees at one firm that performs contract work for the county confirmed that the subject of late payments has been an issue.

“In fact, we were talking about that today,” said dispatcher Steve Franks at Geller’s ready mix concrete company in Westminster. “In our situation, because we’re a small company, we would be hesitant to accept work from the county.”

Times staff writers Leslie Berkman, Yvette Cabrera, Ken Ellingwood, Ching-Ching Ni and Diane Seo and Times correspondents Jeff Bean and Leslie Earnest contributed to this report.