28 Led to Safety as Fire Guts Room in Old Ventura Hotel

Twenty-eight residents of the Mission Hotel in downtown Ventura were led through dense smoke to safety by firefighters and police officers early Thursday when a blaze gutted a second-floor room.

Officials suspect that the fire, which was reported at 2:03 a.m., was deliberately set.

The occupants were housed overnight at a nearby American Red Cross shelter. Three were treated for smoke inhalation.

Linda Fondren, 47, said a police officer knocked on her door and woke her. “When I opened the door, black smoke rolled in,” she said. “I got my dog and my purse.”

Fondren and the other tenants were allowed to return to the hotel Thursday afternoon. “Everything I own is in that room,” she said, holding her Yorkshire terrier. “It’s not much, but it’s mine.”

Hotel Manager Don La Belle said the fire was confined to Room 2. Wayne Lindsay had lived in the room three months but was evicted Wednesday for not paying his rent, La Belle said.

Ventura Fire Department investigator Glenn True said he would like to talk with Lindsay, who had not been located.

The 50-year-old hotel at Santa Clara and Oak streets houses a beauty school on the ground level. Hotel rooms on the second floor rent for about $340 a month for a tiny room without a private bath, and up to $650 a month for a room with a bath.

The hotel appears to conform with building codes, True said.

“There was a fire in this hotel four years ago,” True said. “This is an old hotel and it does have its problems.”

Even so, he credited the room’s solid wooden door for preventing flames from reaching the corridor.

Damage was estimated at $15,000 to the structure and $5,000 to room contents.

The Lu Ross Academy of Hair Design, the beauty school on the first floor, received some water damage.

School owner Cathy Vasek said it was not the first time that her business has been damaged. She has filed several complaints with the city building code enforcement agency against hotel owner Mel Cummings.

Leaky hotel pipes caused $7,000 in damage to her business in November, 1990, and another $6,000 in damage in June, she said.

Sherry Jeffery, code enforcement officer, acknowledged that the city has received complaints about Cummings.

“But he is responsive. We get on the phone and call Mel, and Mel sends someone down and fixes it,” Jeffery said.

Jeffery said similar complaints had been filed by the owner of a drapery shop on the ground floor of Cummings’ Hamilton Hotel on Main Street.

“Periodically, we do get substandard housing complaints,” she said. “But as long as Mel fixes it, we don’t have a problem.”

Cummings, 46, of Oxnard, owns nine hotels in Ventura, Oxnard and Santa Paula. Many of his tenants are welfare recipients, transients and other low-income people.

Cummings, who has owned the Mission Hotel since 1982, said of Vasek’s complaints: “We’ve responded to every leak we’ve had.”