Crowds Detour Into Ojai When Freeway Closes : Aftermath: Gas stations sell out as rerouted strangers look for food and fuel. One woman in labor needs a sheriff’s escort.

John Guest spent the last two days hollering directions to motorists creeping past his mobile home park at the intersection of California 150 and 33 just outside the city limits of Ojai.

“People don’t seem to know where they are,” said Guest, 77, wearing a straw hat and squinting through trifocals at passing cars. “They’re in the middle of the country as far as they are concerned.”

A few miles down the road, a collection of much younger and more enterprising men did a brisk business of selling soft drinks for $1 a piece. John G. Johnson of Ojai decided to take up roadside sales rather than brave the road to his regular job in Santa Barbara. “I called in sick,” he said.

The parade of vehicles with hungry passengers cleaned out the Casitas Market of maps, potato chips and sodas. By late Monday morning, a lone Twinkie remained in the market’s Hostess snack trays.

Park rangers at Lake Casitas were swamped with weary travelers seeking relief on the road Sunday night. “We had people hopping over the fence to use our portable toilets,” said gatekeeper Michelle Houle. “It was crazy.”

The diversion of thousands of motorists from the Ventura Freeway site of the Southern Pacific train derailment has dramatically altered small-town life in the Ojai Valley.

A bumper-to-bumper stream of cars continued to snake through the 35-mile detour through narrow mountainous roads Monday, delivering the Ojai Valley a taste of highway madness better known on Los Angeles freeways.

The detour added an average of about 2 1/2 hours to the trip from Santa Barbara to Ventura on Monday, compared to the five-hour delay that motorists faced the night before.

At one point on Sunday, accidents forced traffic to a standstill on California 150, the 25-mile stretch that connects Santa Barbara County to Ojai. “People were walking on the roadway, playing loud music on their radios,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Don Cunningham said. “It was a big party atmosphere. Some people were singing.”

Yet the party turned ugly along stretches of California 33, which connects Ventura to the communities in the Ojai Valley. “People got in yelling matches, honking their horns,” Diane Lee of Ojai said. “At midnight, people turned off their engines and just waited. The traffic continued all night long. It was a mess.”

Margaret Jackson, 33, of Ventura got caught in the gridlock about 11 p.m. Unlike the less pressing needs of others, she had gone into labor before she got into the car. When she and her husband, Greg, saw the traffic backup, she panicked.

“She had an immediate contraction right there,” he said. “She just freaked out.” Greg Jackson asked for help, and a sheriff’s deputy cleared a path through the traffic while a county firefighter got into the car to try to calm the expectant mother.

“The patrol guy was racing through all of these cars,” Greg Jackson said. “He was just blasting his siren and everybody pulled over. He just made a little path, and we went right through. It was pretty harrowing.”

The position of the baby forced Margaret Jackson to undergo a Cesarean section, said Dr. Robert A. Shankey of Ojai Valley Hospital. Had she not arrived at the hospital in time, the mother and child could have died, he said.

The couple briefly considered naming their healthy baby boy Mike or Steve, after the men who came to their aid. Instead, they named him Paul, a name they had chosen earlier.

The abrupt diversion of traffic from an expansive coastal freeway to a country road seemed to bewilder many out-of-town motorists.

“We wanted to go to San Francisco. We made a change in roads, and we don’t know where we are,” said German tourist Birgit Rauch, beseeching a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy for assistance.

Driving a rental car from Los Angeles, Rauch said neither she nor her family had any clue of the disaster that had derailed their plans to head straight up the coast. “We wanted to go the (Pacific Coast Highway),” she said.

California Highway Patrol officers grew unnerved in the midday sun, shouting at drivers who stopped in their tracks to ask directions.

“The most irritating thing about it is that we keep answering the same stupid questions over and over,” said CHP Traffic Officer Brad Prows, wiping his brow. “We’re not going to send them the wrong direction. But they just want to make sure. “

Heavy traffic turned the slow-paced Ojai Valley communities into bustling centers of commerce. The Circle K store in Mira Monte did about $1,000 in business in half an hour.

“We need to order baby wipes,” Dawn Miner told the manager of the Circle K. “Everybody’s been asking for them.”

Meanwhile, lines of people waiting to use the restrooms snaked through the convenience store.

The Chevron station in Oak View, one of only four stations on the detour route, was drained dry of gas by 2 a.m. Monday.

While some motorists camped by the side of the road, a few sought refuge at The Oaks of Ojai, a posh health club at the center of town. “If you are going to get stuck in traffic, you might as well get stuck at a spa,” said Susan Wax of Santa Barbara.

Wax was trying to return home from Burbank Sunday night when she got trapped in the traffic. Every motel in the area showed “no vacancy” signs, so she checked in to The Oaks about midnight, a place she had long wanted to stay.

“This morning I did aerobics, stretched, the Stairmaster and swam,” she said. “It was great.”

Times staff writer Hugo Martin and correspondent Thia Bell contributed to this story.

FYI

The California Highway Patrol said only residents of Solimar Beach, Faria and La Conchita may enter the closed section of the Ventura Freeway to return home. Residents of La Conchita may return home only if they approach the area from Carpinteria. All residents must provide a valid driver’s license or other identification at CHP checkpoints. Residents of Seacliff, who were evacuated after the derailment, will not be allowed to return home until the area is cleared for safe passage, the CHP said.