After the Flood : RV Park Is Rebuilt but Memories of Terror Remain

Dan Mealer vividly recalls the muddy torrent knifing through the Ventura RV park as he dashed from motor home to motorhome trying to make 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 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 in 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 were damaged or destroyed; one was washed under the Ventura Freeway and out to sea.

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

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

About a month later, the park reopened after the owners moved 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, whose 168 parking spots for recreational vehicles are filled on summer weekends. The park features a swimming pool, a Jacuzzi, a general store and some of California’s most beautiful beaches a few paces away.

California Highway Patrol Officer Craig Williams, 38, was relaxing with his family beside his 22-foot motor home this week, killing time before his new home in Victorville is completed.

Of that February day, a day when Williams was on duty near the park, he recalled, “Everything was under water.”

Debby Harder, 42, one of the RV park’s longtime residents, also has returned to the park. She said this week that she would never forget the deluge.

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

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

The flood revived a controversy between the 4-year-old park’s owners and environmental activists over whether the park should have been built on an 18-acre section of river bottom and flood plain.

What’s more, city and county lawmakers have declared that the park was in violation of its original permit because it did not have an adequate flood warning system at the time of the storm.

Critics also accuse the owners of allowing several families to live there on a long-term basis in violation of the permit that specifies that all residents be transitory. Some of the motor homes had been there so long that they were, in effect, immobile, they said.

These issues remain in controversy today, although the park has so far avoided closure.

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

Hubbard is the widow of Ventura developer Arnold Hubbard, who died shortly after the flood. She said she is working on installing a computer system linked to county Flood Control District gauges upstream from the park in the Ventura River. The gauges can serve as an early-warning system when the river rises to a dangerous level.

Everett Millais, director of Ventura’s Community Development Department, said Tuesday that if nothing is done to resolve the issues in dispute 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 protects the safety of its residents. “It is in a flood plain,” he said. “It will flood again.”