Remembering the Flood of ’92 : Ventura: Business is good again at a once inundated RV park. But controversy over its flood-plain site continues.

Dan Mealer vividly recalls the muddy torrent knifing through the Ventura RV park as he dashed from motor home to motor home making sure everyone was out of harm’s way.

It was six months ago today when five inches of rain fell over a five-hour period, inundating nearly all of the Ventura River’s watershed in the mountains above Ojai.

The Feb. 12 deluge dispatched a wall of rushing muddy water into the Ventura Beach RV Resort on West Main Street, the type of storm that might occur once or twice in a century.

Televised news accounts flashed around the world, presenting a vivid picture of the horror of a classic flash flood: about 40 recreational vehicles damaged or destroyed, and one washed under the Ventura Freeway and out to sea.

Miraculously, however, none of the residents in 57 motor homes at the park drowned. The only fatality came when a homeless man living in the nearby river bottom was swept away.

“Somebody was looking out after us,” Mealer, 34, the park’s assistant manager, said. “It’s a day I won’t forget.”

About a month later, the park reopened after the owners moved about 3,000 cubic yards of mud and debris, bulldozing some of it into a berm to ward off future flooding.

Business is good again at the neatly kept Ventura Beach RV Resort, which fills its 168 parking spots for recreational vehicles on summer weekends. The park features a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, general store and some of California’s most beautiful beaches a few paces away.

California Highway Patrol Officer Craig Williams, 38, and his family were relaxing next to his 22-foot motor home this week, killing time before his new home in Victorville is completed.

Williams remarked how good the park looks compared to that February day when he was working traffic on the Ventura Freeway near the park. “Everything was underwater,” he said.

Some local officials and environmental activists say it is only a matter of time before the park floods again. They say it should be subject to tough safety rules or be shut down.

The flood revived a controversy between the 4-year-old park’s owners and environmentalists over why the park was built on an 18-acre section of river bottom and flood plain.

Also, city and county lawmakers declared at the time of the flood that the park was in violation of its original permit because it lacked an adequate flood-warning system.

Critics also accuse the owners of allowing several families to live in the park on a long-term basis in violation of the permit stipulating that all residents be transitory, not permanent. Some of the motor homes had been there so long that they were, in effect, immobile, they said.

These issues remain controversial today, though the park has avoided closure.

The park’s owner, Nancy Hubbard, said she is developing plans to conform with the law.

Hubbard is the wife of the late Ventura developer Arnold Hubbard, who died shortly after the flood. She said she is working on installation of a computer system linked to Ventura County Flood Control District gauges upstream from the park in the Ventura River. The gauges can offer an early warning system when the river rises to a dangerous level.

The computer system would allow for a faster warning than could be provided by telephone.

John Weikel, a district engineer who telephoned the RV park about 8:30 a.m. on Feb. 12, about half an hour before the flash flood hit, said the park’s staff won’t be able to understand the technical data generated by the gauges.

“But at least they will be able to tell when it’s raining hard,” he said. “It may be raining hard up in the mountains and not raining by the ocean. So (the computer link) is a factor to improve their awareness.”

Also, Hubbard said the installation of a public address system is being explored to warn residents of an emergency.

One of the stickiest issues is the city-imposed rule that anyone staying at the park for 30 days must leave for two weeks before returning. About 10% of the park’s residents call it home and each pays between $500 and $600 a month for their space.

Hubbard said she continues her late husband’s policy of allowing people to stay 28 days, move out for a day and then move back for another 28 days. “We’re trying to work it out,” she said.

Everett Millais, director of Ventura’s Community Development Department, said Wednesday that if nothing is done on these issues by Oct. 1--the beginning of the rainy season--he will urge the City Council to shut the park down.

It is imperative, Millais said, that the park live up to its permit to protect the safety of its residents. “It is in a flood plain,” he said. “It will flood again.”

Still, some permanent residents have chosen to remain.

One of them, Debby Harder, 42, still lives in her older motor home at the park, months after she and her companion shoveled four feet of mud out of their previous recreational vehicle. She said she has vivid memories of the flood.

“Scared? Yes,” she said. “I’d never been in a flood. We tried to hook up our trailer, but it happened too fast.” She said her companion narrowly escaped by driving out a back gate.

Don Savage, a desk clerk at the park, said he continues to get calls asking if the park is back in business. European tourists learned about the park’s location while watching the devastation on television, he said.

In an ironic way, he said, the flood served as a kind of international advertising for the place. “We didn’t think it was going to be that way, but it was.”