SANTA PAULA : Landslide Closes Road Following 3.1 Aftershock

Tons of earth and rock tumbled down across South Mountain Road east of Santa Paula on Thursday, closing down the same stretch of highway hit by a landslide last year.

The latest slide, which a county geologist speculated was triggered by a 3.1 earthquake 30 miles away, fanned across South Mountain Road after 2 a.m. and continued to send stones and dirt down the cliff throughout the day.

Sounding a somber note Thursday afternoon, the head of the Ventura County Transportation Department said he did not expect the road to be reopened in the near future because of budget shortfalls.

Officials encountered the same problem last year, when crews worked 11 weeks before reopening the two-lane road, which winds through a sparsely populated patchwork of ranches, orchards and oil fields above Santa Paula.

“Currently, we don’t have enough money on the budget to do work on an unanticipated item like this, of this magnitude,” transportation department chief Butch Britt said.

Even if the money was available, he added, he would not send crews to clean up the debris until the cliff becomes stable.

“What you would see on the road is only a small portion of what is poised to come down,” Britt said.

As many as 160,000 tons of earth--perhaps twice the amount that tumbled onto South Mountain Road last year--might have to be removed before the road can be reopened, he said. Workers were erecting a fence on either side of the slide Thursday to prevent people from endangering themselves, he added.

Until the road is cleaned up, the people who live and work beyond this section of road will have to reach Santa Paula by detouring through Fillmore. Britt estimated the delay at 30 to 50 minutes.

Yolanda Matchett of Saticoy was one of the first people affected by the detour.

Matchett, 36, had been called by a friend who lives up the road.

“She’s eight months pregnant,” Matchett said of her 33-year-old friend, whose husband was working in Los Angeles. “She just called me and said she’s feeling a lot of pressure and pain.”

Frustrated, Matchett turned to take the long way around.

Although her friend was fine Thursday, Matchett said, she was upset that visiting the doctor might take up to an hour longer now.

The landslide, which road maintenance engineer Loren Blair estimated began about 200 feet above the road, apparently occurred after a 3.1 earthquake two miles northwest of San Fernando, Britt said.

John Misch, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said the temblor apparently was an aftershock of the Jan. 17 earthquake in Northridge.