Residents Seek Barrier Between Homes, Freeway : Thousand Oaks: A car drives off the road and damages a residence. Senior citizens revive pleas for a guardrail or wall.

A group of Thousand Oaks residents has resurrected a 13-year-old campaign to get a barrier built between their mobile home park and the busy Ventura Freeway.

The fight pits about 220 senior citizens who live at Thunderbird Oaks Senior Adult Park on Conejo School Road against the California Department of Transportation.

Residents became alarmed last week after a car carrying a mother and her 21-month-old son barreled down a 30-foot embankment, mowing down a fence and a plum tree before hitting a home on Thunderbird Drive. The occupants of the car suffered only minor injuries. No citations have been issued, but the investigation is continuing, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said.

Although Rosalina Maldonado, the 72-year-old owner of the mobile home, was not inside, she said she has been scared ever since. The car tore a panel of siding off her home and shattered a bedroom window.

“If I was home, I would have been in there. We need a fence, we need a fence so bad,” Maldonado said as she stood near the spot where her 13-year-old plum tree once stood. “I’m scared. They go so fast, and it could happen again.”

Residents have documented five accidents in the past five years in which motorists driving on the Ventura Freeway have plunged off the road, hitting trees and damaging mobile homes at the park. Neither the CHP nor Caltrans could confirm the number of accidents. Neighbors said none of the accidents resulted in major injuries or fatalities.

The only barrier that separates the homes from the freeway now is a chain-link fence about six feet tall.

Bill Minter, a sound-wall project engineer for Caltrans, said his agency has agreed to examine whether a guardrail or sound barrier is needed. However, he said the probability of getting one is slim, considering that the idea has been rejected twice because of what Caltrans says is a low accident rate.

“I would say the prognosis is pretty bad,” he said. “If the statistics say you’re better off not building a guardrail because of the accident rate, then we don’t.”

The mobile home residents’ fight to get a barrier began in 1978, when Caltrans first denied a request by Thousand Oaks to install a guardrail.

City Councilman Alex Fiore, who was mayor that year, made the request on behalf of the Thunderbird residents. He said he did not understand why Caltrans refused to erect a protective barrier.

“Even though it’s a straightaway, a lot of people at night drive over because they fall asleep,” he said.

Fiore asked city staff members to study whether the city should pay for construction of a barrier. The report will be reviewed next Tuesday.

Caltrans officials acknowledge that traffic has increased dramatically since the park opened in 1976. But neither Caltrans nor the CHP says the area is unsafe.

Fifteen years ago, 74,000 cars traveled on both the northbound and southbound sides of the six-lane freeway each day. Today, that number has more than doubled to about 167,000 daily.

Ironically, the last accident occurred Sept. 3, three years to the day after another car swerved off the highway and rolled down the hill, said Ella McDonald, 72, who has lived at the park since it opened. In that accident, the car narrowly missed hitting Maldonado’s back fence.

It was McDonald who, in 1987, helped gather 223 signatures calling for a barrier to protect residents from noise generated by cars and trucks on the freeway as well as from accidents.

That request was refused by Caltrans, which said that since the park was built six years after the highway was constructed, the state was not required to erect a wall that would keep out noise.

McDonald said she became concerned after reading about accidents involving large trucks carrying hazardous chemicals.

“It’s unfair that the city let this get built so close without some protection,” McDonald said. “I’m really concerned about toxic waste and large trucks . . . jackknifing.”

Another longtime resident, Walter Tujague, 71, said some of the residents who lived next to the freeway decided to move instead of contending with noise and the risk of accidents.

About 30 of the park’s 161 mobile homes border the Ventura Freeway, and at least six of the eight to 10 homes that are for sale are located along that stretch, said Tujague, who is organizing another petition drive to ask Caltrans to build a barrier.

“What’s the criteria? Must we have 50 cars come over? Must we have 100? Must we have a dozen?” he asked. “I don’t know what Caltrans considers a lot of cars.”

“You know how they travel this freeway? Like gangbusters,” Tujague added. “Heaven forbid one of these 18-wheelers should ever come over the edge.”