Hundred-Degree Heat Punishes Students : Weather: A school cooling system fails in Simi Valley. County residents will have to contend with high temperatures a while longer.

Students wilted and aging air conditioners died in the searing heat Wednesday as temperatures in Ventura County rose above the century mark for the second day in a row.

The hottest spot in the county was Simi Valley at 105 degrees, according to Weather Data Inc., a private firm that provides forecasts for The Times.

As the mercury rose, six classrooms had to be shut down after an aging air-conditioning system failed at Simi Valley High School, Principal David Ellis said.

Hundreds of students were shuttled to the library and other classrooms. Outdoor physical education classes were moved into the air-conditioned gym, Ellis said.

Other cities weren’t much cooler. Ojai had a high of 101.

In Fillmore and Piru it was 104, according to the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District, which also tracks weather conditions.

Officials could not say whether the temperatures were unusually high because neither Weather Data Inc. nor the National Weather Service keeps records of high and low temperatures in Ventura County.

Kent Field, a meteorologist for the pollution control district, said Tuesday and Wednesday were the hottest two days this year, about eight to 12 degrees above the hottest days of summer.

But Field said he remembers past Octobers when the first week was just as hot.

“You can almost lay down bets for the first of October always being hot,” he said. “It’s the change of seasons, and this is one of Mother Nature’s last little surges.”

County residents will have to contend with the heat for a few days more.

Weather officials said the hot spell will not end until Friday or Saturday, when temperatures are expected to fall to the 70s on the coast and the 90s inland.

So teachers and schoolchildren may continue to be tested by the heat.

In Thousand Oaks, where temperatures were above 100 by midday Wednesday, Weathersfield Elementary School instructors shut the lights off to give their cranky students the illusion of cooler temperatures, fifth-grade teacher Cheryl Lomen said. The school is not air-conditioned.

“It’s always pretty warm when school starts, but this is outrageous,” she said during a lunch break. “We’re supposed to be teaching, and the kids are falling asleep.”

At Santa Paula High School, teachers brought their own fans to lower classroom temperatures, Principal Bob Fisher said.

“The kids are listless,” he said. “They’re hot and wilted.”

Others who had to stay out in the sun because of their work did the best they could.

County firefighter Dan Morgan had to spend hours encased in a jacket and long pants after he and others responded to a report of a hazardous materials spill in Newbury Park.

As soon as the work was over, Morgan and a group of firefighters placed a cooler full of cold drinks under a tree and eagerly gulped down soft drinks in the shade.

“It’s hoooooot,” Morgan said as sweat poured down his neck.

Newbury Park gas station owner Amir Ammadi said he arrived in California only five months ago from his native Iran, where he was used to the heat, only to discover that it can be equally hot in his new home.

“Nobody likes it when it’s hot,” he said, scowling as he poured oil into a hot engine. “When it’s hot, the oil runs out like water.”

Some young children who were allowed outside to play settled for sitting quietly in the shade. At Borchard Community Park in Newbury Park, a mother and her two children sat watching three teen-agers throw a baseball around an empty diamond.

“I don’t know why it’s so hot,” 5-year-old Tommy Rogins said as he sat on the grass. “Maybe it’s because we’re too close to the sun.”

Hot weather was apparently to blame for the sudden appearance of a large rattlesnake in the front yard of a house in Camarillo.

“It’s very hot, and when the hot weather comes, snakes come out,” said Mia Frost, chief of field operations for the county Animal Regulation Department.

Many people settled on going to the water to escape the heat. Channel Islands Harbor was filled with boats because of the heat, making the area more congested than usual, Harbor Patrol Officer Tim Daniels said.

“They all like to go out for a little cruise to cool down,” he said.