OJAI : Mayor Takes Over Disaster Team Post

Ojai Mayor Nina V. Shelley has replaced retired county Fire Capt. Ed Gutierrez as head of the disaster committee for the Ojai Valley chapter of the American Red Cross.

“There is no reason I cannot work with the Red Cross as a mayor,” Shelley said. “The duties of the disaster committee chair have more to do with making sure the team is in a mode of readiness long before the disaster occurs.”

The geography of the Ojai Valley, which isolated it from Ventura during the 1969 floods, is one reason that residents have maintained the only separate Red Cross chapter in the county, Shelley said.

Its board of directors and volunteers work closely with the Ventura County chapter, Shelley said.

Gutierrez, who headed the committee for 14 years, will continue to coordinate emergency shelter operations and help families who lose their houses to such disasters as fire, flood or earthquake.

A former captain in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, Shelley served on the Ojai chapter’s board for three years while taking other emergency management training. She recently spent 20 hours updating her first-aid skills.

Shelley was mayor during the 1985 fires that surrounded Ojai, caused mass evacuations, the loss of houses and burned 119,000 acres of Los Padres National Forest.

“The mayor’s duties are not clearly defined. You’re just expected to provide leadership,” she said. Her appointed mayoral post ends in April, but she will remain on the Ojai City Council until her four-year term is up in 1994.