Busy ferries

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Greg Bombard, president of Catalina Express, said his eight high-speed ferries, which depart from San Pedro, downtown Long Beach and the Queen Mary landing, were running on schedule today, unlike last night when Catalina Express ‘moved as fast as we could to move people.’ Bombard said his ferries got 2,500 to 3,000 people off the island last night, including campers, residents and day-trippers. The ferries take about an hour to get to the island and a half hour to unload.

Bombard said the last ferry of evacuees arrived between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., and a boatload of 88 Los Angeles County Sheriff and county fire personnel left just after 6 a.m. along with thousands of bottles of water. Another ferry with two truckloads of box lunches for emergency responders was scheduled to depart at 8:50 a.m. from San Pedro, Bombard said.

‘We were asked not to bring anybody to the island that’s vacationing right now until they assess what they’ve done overnight,’ Bombard said. ‘We’ll need an all-clear before we’re able to carry people over there to be able to go on about their vacation.’

Bombard said he had expected a lot of business this weekend because of the beautiful spring weather. ‘This would have been a big weekend,’ Bombard said. He said it was too early to estimate what the impact on his business would be.

-Susannah Rosenblatt