Early Morning Fire Levels Homeless Shelter in Oxnard : Social services: No one is hurt, but 55 men lose temporary beds. Blaze occurs hours after 20th anniversary party.

The Oxnard Rescue Mission--which has fed, housed and clothed homeless men since 1972--was destroyed by fire early Sunday, hours after celebrating its 20th anniversary.

The fire left 55 men homeless again and turned a 68-bed dormitory at 563 E. 6th St. into a smoldering pile of rubble and ashes. No one was injured.

“I used to sleep in a park on Date Street,” said Danny Thompson, 27, an unemployed department store clerk who sat glumly Sunday afternoon in the Oxnard High School gym, where American Red Cross workers had set up an emergency shelter. “Now we don’t have anyplace to go. The shelter was our home.”

Although 42 men were expected to be housed Sunday night at the gym, a Red Cross worker said there is no long-term plan to continue to house them.

Oxnard firefighters said the cause of the blaze is under investigation. Officials suspected that the 12:40 a.m. fire began in a faulty dryer in the laundry room.

The value of building and contents was estimated at about $500,000, fire officials said.

Fire Capt. Clarence Slayton said firefighters had difficulty controlling the blaze as it leaped from the ground-floor laundry room into the walls of the two-story, wooden building and into the attic. The roof caved in after the fire destroyed most of the second floor.

The building lies in the heart of one of Oxnard’s grittiest neighborhoods, between railroad tracks and the Oxnard Community Clinic.

The Rescue Mission, which is funded by charitable donations, also offered a gathering place for homeless men, where they could eat regular meals or use the laundry room and showers. Sessions for the mission’s alcohol and drug counseling program were held on the second floor.

On Saturday, operations manager Joe Thomas said, residents and mission workers held a celebration and barbecue marking the Fourth of July and the shelter’s 20th anniversary. Most residents were asleep when the fire began.

Ed Seymore, 25, was sleeping when he heard screams and smelled smoke. He hobbled out of the burning building on his crutches, leaving his artificial leg behind.

“I walked out on my crutches as fast as I could. Then I stood outside and waited for the engines,” Seymore said Sunday afternoon as he sat in striped pajamas in the gym at Oxnard High School. “If I’d been in that bed, I wouldn’t be here.”

A friend retrieved Seymore’s leg from the building, but the water-logged prosthesis was damaged beyond repair, Seymore said.

At daybreak, residents returned to find only the skeleton of the building that they had temporarily called home.

Some defied firefighters’ warnings to stay out, picking through the ashes.

One man darted under a Fire Department tape to retrieve a scorched file folder of mail, identification cards and Medi-Cal documents he said he needed to get another job. A firefighter salvaged a pair of dentures the 40-year-old man had left behind when he fled the burning building.

“I can’t say it was like living at the Hilton,” said the man, who identified himself only as Pete. “But I spent six weeks living in my car and drinking continuously. I was afraid if I was out there long enough, I would be dead.”

Mike Goth, acting director for Red Cross emergency services, said his agency would meet today with city officials to find places to house the men left homeless by the fire. The high school gym cannot be used for more than a few days, he said.

Homelessness “is a county problem. I don’t want to raise false hopes that this is going to be a long-term solution,” Goth said. “Until we’re able to rebuild the rescue mission, there’s no replacement in the county.”

Rescue mission officials say they do not know what they will do.

“We were in the process of trying to open up a women’s shelter, and this is going to set us back,” said executive director Jerry Roberg. The three-bedroom dwelling that was slated to house women in September could house up to a dozen of the displaced men.

Other rescue mission officials said they planned to begin gathering contributions for a new building as soon as possible.

“Where are we going to get the money to rebuild this?” asked Dwane Chapman, a vice president of the shelter’s board of directors, as he wandered through the rubble. “I just talked to a guy out there who said: ‘I was homeless. Now I’m more homeless than I was before.’ ”