Town hall brings LQ flood victims together ahead of lawsuit

Steve Cardinal spent months working to fix the damage caused by the “700-year storm” that wreaked havoc on parts of La Quinta last fall.

“We had to re-insulate, we had to re-stucco, re-texture, we had to re-paint,” Cardinal said.

Eight months later, he’s out more than $12,000 and still not done with repairs to his home on Calle Obispo.

“The house is livable, but there’s some mold issues, there’s one bathroom that’s just too much to re-do the whole shower so we have one full bathroom and one bathroom that has no shower,” Cardinal said.

In the La Quinta Cove, Dale Wissman spent more than $60,000 out of pocket on damage at his home.

“That’s my daughter’s college education. That’s retirement stuff we wanted,” Wissman said.

These two residents, and dozens like them, say the city of La Quinta is at least partially to blame.

Several years ago, the city mailed letters to homeowners saying they were no longer in a flood plain thanks to recent flood improvement work. The city said FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, designated the area is having almost zero chance of flooding.

As a result, many homeowners canceled their $1200-year flood insurance plans.

“They put you in the least likely area to flood, in the desert with an “x” which is less than one percent chance, you’re just not going to flood,” Wissman said.

When the torrential downpour came on September 8, 2014, residents say the infrastructure couldn’t keep pace.

“The city hasn’t put the correct information out there on what happened with the floods. While the rain was bad, most of our problems we experienced in these areas was simply because the drainage doesn’t work,” Wissman said, adding that he notified the city of the drainage flaws multiple times.

Determining who’s responsible is a task two high-powered attorneys, Tom Girardi and Larry Shea, are ready to take on.

Girardi was lead counsel for the toxic tort case that was the basis for the Academy Award-winning movie “Erin Brockovich.” Shea was lead counsel for defense of the top multi-family condo insurer in the Northridge Earthquake cases.

The attorneys hosted a town hall meeting at the Renaissance Resort in Indian Wells Tuesday night to get homeowners together and inform them of their rights. Girardi couldn’t make the meeting but sent a representative from his law firm.

“Having these guys out here is like having Michael Jordan and the 1992 Olympic basketball team,” Wissman said.

“We probably wouldn’t be out here if my parents weren’t also flooded out in Indian Wells and I went through it with them,” Shea said of why he became interested in the case.

Homeowners say they feel confident taking this issue to court is the only way for them to see any money flow back in their direction.

“La Quinta has now became this lake and they’re going to have to rehabilitate the drainage and and reimburse the homeowners for the losses due to their own negligence.”