Surprise Deluge : Ventura River Nearly Spills as RV Park Evacuated

After tracking a Pacific storm as it inched across Ventura County through the night, a weary Hassan Kasraie received a frantic phone call about 4 a.m. Wednesday.

“The meteorologist called and said the storm was just sitting there and dumping a bunch of water on the upper part of the Ventura River,” said the county flood control manager. “That got everyone all excited.”

Kasraie dragged himself back to the “war room”--a computer center tucked away in the county government building in Ventura--and watched on a blue-screen monitor as rainfall pounded the county.

Although the National Weather Service issued a flood warning for the Ventura River south of Ojai at 9 p.m. Wednesday, sheriff’s, police and fire officials in the west county said they had not been briefed on the flood threat.

“We’ve had about 60 to 75 calls in the last 20 minutes” after television reports of the advisory, said sheriff’s dispatcher Elsie Parker. “Everyone’s panicked. We know nothing; we’ve heard nothing.”

The NWS warned residents living along the river from Ojai to the ocean to seek higher ground.

According to WeatherData, a private meteorological service, 0.5 of an inch to 1.5 inches of rain were expected overnight, and the river was expected to overflow its banks by 2 a.m. today. The advisory was in effect through 9 a.m. today.

In two early morning hours, more than two inches fell at the northern tip of the Ventura River northwest of Ojai. The river later came within an inch of overflowing its banks, forcing the evacuation of the Ventura Beach RV Resort off Main Street.

Other parts of the county received more than an inch of rain in the same period, once again catching the experts by surprise.

“This storm really tricked everybody,” Kasraie said. “We were watching it as it was happening and it was really kind of scary.”

Kasraie was not the only one with one eye trained on the heavens and the other keeping watch on the rain-soaked earth.

As the region’s dreary weather continued Wednesday, with sudden downpours darkening the sky throughout the day, residents of low-lying areas kept apprehensive watch on the Ventura River.

About 5 p.m., fire officials ordered campers to evacuate the RV park. About 10 trailers left the park. Two trailers stayed at the site because their owners could not be found.

Earlier in the day, wary campers recalled the horror stories that they had heard about last year’s flood, which submerged dozens of mobile homes in a wave of mud and water and swept one out to sea.

Puttering about their homes and restlessly glancing out their windows, residents said they were ready to pull out of the park on 10 minutes’ notice.

Some had been in Ventura when the camp was evacuated last Thursday evening, and despite the occasional sunshine on Wednesday, they remained on edge.

“I’m getting kind of nervous--overall, I want it to rain in California, but not now, not when I’m living on the bottom of a flood plain,” said Mark Spence, 26, a student at Ventura College who has lived in the RV park for six months.

Park managers said they were monitoring the river every half an hour and would knock on trailer doors to spread the alarm if a flash flood were imminent.

“The people who work here have been very conscientious” about warning residents to prepare for flooding, said Gloria Smith, 59, as her husband fixed a broken cabinet inside their 40-foot camper. “The rain doesn’t bother us so much because we know what we were up against--we’ve seen this area under water before.”

Others, however, grumbled that even the periodic rainbows couldn’t make up for an indoor vacation.

“I assumed it wouldn’t be nice here all the time, but I didn’t think we would get washed away,” said Roseann Riley, a Michigan native who came to Ventura earlier this week, in the middle of a six-month road trip.

Poking her head cautiously outside her screen door during a break in the rain, she added, “we’re going back to Florida, where the weather’s more predictable.”

Tucked away under a concrete bridge at the highest point of the Ventura River’s bank, Ray Mahalia watched the steadily rising waters from his plywood-and-chicken-wire shelter.

A battered sheet metal sign advertised the shack “4 Rent,” but Mahalia wasn’t quite ready to lease it out.

Mahalia, known around town as Packrat, says he’s ready to make the plywood structure his permanent refuge if the swirling, muddy river keeps creeping toward the bamboo shanty further down the bank, where he spends most of his time.

Like other riverbank dwellers living in a tent city under the bridge, Mahalia has learned to be prepared to flee at the first sign of flooding.

“People take shifts standing watch on the river” so they can monitor every inch of accumulation, Mahalia said. “Otherwise, we’ll have a hell of a time getting out of here.”

Showers are expected to linger throughout the county today, with as much as 4.5 inches expected to fall in Matilija Canyon northwest of Ojai.

Forecasters predict that showers will increase Friday as the opening act for another major storm over the weekend. They say the first break in the wet weather could come on Monday.

For the folks in the war room at flood control headquarters, the series of storms means a lot of long days and nights.

Kasraie began monitoring the Wednesday morning deluge from his computer at home Tuesday night. He later went to the county government center where he continued his high-tech computer watch on his first real storm since being promoted three months ago to head the county’s hydrology section.

He commands a 10-person crew that keeps tabs on rivers, storm drains and flood channels throughout the county and relays the information to law enforcement agencies and rescue workers.

“When you sit at these machines, you can see the trend and where we might run into problems,” Kasraie said. “It still looks kind of scary. We just have to keep watching it closely and hope for the best.”

Ventura County Rainfall

As of 9 p.m. Wednesday

Rainfall Rainfall normal Location Storm total since Oct. 1 this time of year Ojai 2.96 16.54 8.25 Ventura 1.60 10.71 6.30 Oxnard 1.47 9.28 5.68 Camarillo 1.79 9.80 5.57 Thousand Oaks 2.36 11.17 6.02 Simi Valley 2.04 11.51 5.62 Moorpark 2.21 10.06 5.90 Santa Paula 2.12 12.37 7.11 Fillmore 3.37 15.09 7.81

RELATED STORY: B7