BIG CHILL TO BRING BIG BILLS HOMES OR FARMS, IT'S COLD COMFORT.

Byline: ERIC LEACH and BRENT HOPKINS Staff Writers

VENTURA -- The record-breaking cold snap, which has ruined nearly a billion dollars of citrus and other California crops, combined with high winds Monday to create scores of chilly, home improvement chores.

Winds gusting beyond 40 mph in the canyons and passes toppled trees, blew off doors and tested the strength of garden plants still alive after days of freezing temperatures.

Plumbers, especially in Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley, worked around the clock to shut off water from broken pipes, which have caused severe water damage to many homes.

Lewis Brown, a retired Northridge dairy worker, helped put his neighbor's front door back together after the winds blew it down. With temperatures near freezing, he arrived early at the North Hills Home Depot to pick up weather stripping and new hinges.

``Now that the wind's blowing so hard, you can feel it getting in through the cracks,'' he said. ``It's powerful. Definitely very powerful.''

Too powerful for Nancy Stella. As the Northridge retail worker's 20- year-old son, Michael, prepared to leave for his job at Best Buy, an unexpected passenger dropped into his Nissan Sentra -- a eucalyptus tree.

``The roof is all crushed in, the doors are shifted, the glass in the windshield's pretty bad,'' she said. ``I think we're going to be shopping for a new car soon. Thank goodness he wasn't inside.''

The record lows Sunday -- from 3 degrees in Lancaster to 20 in Woodland Hills to 36 downtown -- also ruined landscaping in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, said Dallas Brown, a senior salesman at Green Thumb Nursery in Canoga Park.

His phone rang all morning long with people begging for advice on how to protect their petunias from the cold's crush.

``Put down used bed sheets, burlap, anything you can find, just don't use plastic. Once the sun comes out, that'll trap heat inside and you go from extreme cold to extreme heat,'' he said. ``Reduce your water to the absolute minimum to keep the plants alive. Water in the early morning so the ground has a chance to dry up by the evening. ... It's a waiting game at this point.''

Nobody felt the chill worse than area farmers.

In Ventura County, the sight of dead avocados, strawberries and citrus fruit sickened growers who took a major hit to their livelihoods.

``When I heard the first wind machines crank on (Friday night), I had that sinking feeling in my stomach. It was evident by noon Saturday my avocado crop was a total loss,'' said Richard Pidduck, a citrus and avocado grower from the Santa Paula area.

``I'm sick. It's like someone just tore up your paycheck for the year.''

Freeze one of worst

A.G. Kawamura, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, toured the county Monday and met with growers like Pidduck who were stunned by the weekend damage. He said the freeze ``will go down as one of the worst in recent memory. It was heartbreaking. The worst part was the long duration -- 10 hours in some places.''

The least bit of moisture turned to ice. A water main leak that froze on Ventura Boulevard near Balboa Avenue led to 11 cars colliding in five crashes over the weekend, Los Angeles police Sgt. Ed Wheelis said. Crews have since erected a barricade to keep drivers on firmer ground.

Meanwhile, plumbers pleaded with homeowners unfamiliar with freezing temperatures to do some basic things to avoid homeowner disasters.

``Overnight, leave a faucet on running with a stream of water about the size of a pencil,'' said Kurt Bohmer, of Kurt Bohmer Plumbing in Santa Clarita, explaining how to avoid ice from forming in and bursting pipes.

``We have had 2,100 calls and 200 on the major emergency list. We have been shutting water off at homes where the people aren't even home because we see it coming out of their doors. People have to insulate or leave the water on.''

In Ventura County, millions of dollars worth of avocados were destroyed about a month before Super Bowl Sunday, when more avocados are consumed than on any other day of the year.

Farmers had attempted to use water, heaters and wind machines to prevent damage, but it wasn't enough in many cases. In parts of the county, temperatures dropped into the 20s and below.

Steve Barnard said the trees in his Santa Paula area orchard turned brown, adding, ``I've got 20,000 pounds hanging there that are just fried.''

Kawamura said the loss statewide could amount to a billion (dollars) or more once the damage is assessed, but he couldn't predict what effect it would ultimately have on supplies and prices at the market.

He and other officials said it would take days if not weeks to fully gauge the damage.

Widespread damage

California and Arizona -- the typically warmer parts of the country in January -- would normally produce as much as 80 percent of the nation's fruits and vegetables this time of year, he said.

The damage extended from San Diego County to the coastal areas of Ventura County and up to the northern San Joaquin Valley, hitting the San Joaquin Valley and the citrus industry the hardest.

Earl McPhail, Ventura County's agricultural commissioner, said the damage locally would amount to tens of millions of dollars and would spread across the county's $1 billion-a-year agriculture industry.

``The strawberries were hit pretty bad,'' said Henry Vega, a farm labor contractor and citrus and avocado grower in the Santa Paula area. ``We've thrown away at least 70 percent of the fruit right now.

``... Right now I'm devastated on a personal basis and because of the economy. The farming family has been hit pretty hard.''

Staff Writer Rick Coca contributed to this report.

eric.leach(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Steve Barnard, owner of Barnard Ranch in Fillmore, says he lost about 50 percent of his avocado crop.

(2 -- color) Steve Barnard says of his avocado crop in Fillmore during the chill: ``I've got 20,000 pounds hanging there that are just fried.'' Crop losses in the state could amount to $1 billion or more.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer

Box:

Winter chill 

SOURCE: National Weather Service

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist