IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
With significant rains this week, a local drilling and shoring contractor is on the scene making sandbags to help residents protect their property from debris flows.
D.J. Scheffler & Nye has a long-standing relationship with the Malibu community, having installed over 400 foundations for beachfront and hillside homes, along with performing many landslide repairs. Loyalty arising from the decades of work has prompted D.J. Scheffler & Nye to offer free sandbags again to residents threatened by the aftermath of last November’s Woolsey fire. The destructive November wildfire burned more than 96,949 acres, and destroyed 1,643 structures in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, according to Scott McLean, a CAL FIRE spokesman. In Malibu alone, the fire destroyed 649 structures and damaged 128, McLean told I.E. Business Daily.
“We have been part of the community for so long we are treated like family” said Dale Scheffler, the firm’s owner and president. The company is providing labor and equipment to help build sand bags for Malibu area homeowners. “We couldn’t just sit back and do nothing…we had to give back,” he said
When heavy rains arrived on Feb. 2, the firm was on scene with about 2,000 sandbags, some made in Malibu, others brought in already made at a remote site. The bags are filled with the aid of a mechanical device which fills a cluster of them simultaneously, Scheffler said.
Residents can either drive by a distribution lot on the south corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Zumirez Drive (behind the Fire Station 71), or call 909-595-7214, for additional information or further assistance, said Rick Jones, chief financial officer at Scheffler & Nye.
Monday morning (Feb. 11) there were 600 bags at the site, and a crew made another 600 or so on Tuesday. As the rains were expected to be quite heavy on Wednesday, additional sand bags will be prepared rain or shine Jones said. “As long as the bags are being used by residents, we will replenish.”
The bags themselves are plastic, a packaging which Malibu prohibited for sandbag construction in the summer of 2017, said Craig George, environmental sustainability director for the city of Malibu. The city ordinance requires that sandbags be made of burlap, which biodegrades, he said. However, the ordinance has a provision to relax the ban on plastic sacks during an emergency, George said. “Due to the disastrous fire the city suffered,” and the mud and debris slides which followed after heavy rains, “the city felt these conditions created an emergency situation” and allows the use of plastic sandbags, “with the caveat that they are removed once the emergency has terminated,” George said.
D.J. Scheffler & Nye is based in Pomona and has more than 35 years’ experience in foundation drilling, earth shoring, landslide and slope repair. Founded in 1979 by Dale Scheffler as a small concrete contractor, the company has grown to more than 50 employees. It completes more than 150 projects annually throughout Southern California. The team includes an established network of professionals in fields that include geotechnical, structural and civil engineering, field construction, and landscape architecture. The company has a sizable inventory of cranes, excavators, tractors and drilling rigs.
