FEMA SAYS EL NINO NOT ESPECIALLY DISASTROUS ON NATIONAL SCALE.

Byline: Jane E. Allen Associated Press

Despite dire predictions, El Nino delivered a winter that was no costlier than either of the previous two punishing winters in the United States.

There's no doubt this winter was bad: floods in California and the South, blizzards on the Plains, an ice storm in New England, tornadoes in Florida.

But it didn't quite live up to expectations, according to preliminary tallies by the nation's top disaster agency.

``Everybody was screaming that El Nino was going to be Armageddon, but our data reveals that's not what it's turned out to be,'' said Val Bunting, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

As of Wednesday, FEMA had committed more than $289 million for 1997-98 winter disasters.

That compares with $294 million in 1996-97 and $280 million in 1995-96, Bunting said.

The winter of 1996-97 had severe flooding in the West and the Ohio Valley, blizzards in the Dakotas and Minnesota, and a tornado in Arkansas. And the previous winter's calamities included a 13-state blizzard and flooding in the Middle Atlantic States, Northeast and Pacific Northwest.

By way of comparison, Bunting noted that winter damage totaled $126 million in 1987-88, $15.3 million in 1988-89 and $170 million in 1989-90.

Getting a handle on El Nino's full impact in the United States is complicated. FEMA's tallies cover only a fraction of the losses, and no central authority tallies lost life and property.

For example, while FEMA's nationwide figure for this winter is $289 million, California officials peg their damage at $500 million and counting. And that pales compared to two other exceptional California winter storm seasons - the first three months of 1995 and 1997 - which each produced $1.8 billion in damage.

Loss estimates also vary among private insurers.

``We do a lot of comparing apples and oranges and even pomegranates sometimes,'' said Maggie Sheehan of the Boston-based Institute for Business and Home Safety, an insurance industry information-gathering organization.

Even if this year's dollars aren't record, the toll is still huge:

In California, storms blamed on El Nino killed at least 17 people, wiped out strawberry and artichoke crops, pushed houses off hillsides and washed out highways.

In Florida, 42 people died in overnight tornadoes on Feb. 22-23. The state has put the storm damage total since September at $500 million.

In New England, two January ice storms knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers and killed at least 12 people. Damage exceeded $100 million. Hundreds of thousands more were affected in Canada.

El Nino is a phenomenon of the tropical Pacific in which the westward-blowing trade wind weakens, allowing a pool of warm water normally situated off Australia to slosh eastward toward South America. It adds moisture and energy to the atmosphere that fuels worldwide climate disturbances.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

PHOTO Although the owners of these precariously perched hillside homes in Pacifica, and other Californians, might not agree, the past winter was not the most damaging.

George Nikitin/Associated Press