The California Deluge : County Applies Lessons of ’92 to Storm : Flood preparations: Officials credit both better equipment and a larger staff as warnings come sooner this year.

Acting on harsh lessons learned three years ago, Ventura County officials judged themselves well-prepared Tuesday when heavy rains produced a near-carbon copy of the disastrous 1992 Ventura River flood.

As before, storm clouds soaked the county for several days running, then dropped the bomb--a night of hammering rainfall that by Tuesday morning had dumped more than a foot of water into Matilija Canyon.

But by the time the river’s swollen flow had peaked at 10:20 a.m., motor homes at the Ventura Beach R.V. Resort--all but washed away in 1992 floodwaters--had been safely evacuated.

As muddy torrents swept down from the mountains ringing Ojai, new gauges and flood-mapping computers fed a rich stream of information to county flood-control officials.

And as rising water isolated the last few people too slow or stubborn to leave low ground, they were snatched up in sheriff’s helicopters manned by a Swift Water Rescue Team that has nearly doubled in size since 1992.

The flood warnings came sooner this year, thanks to better flood-predicting equipment and a larger staff, county hydrologist Dolores Taylor said.

Extra sensors, more sophisticated computer models and better weather forecasting allowed the Ventura County Flood Control District to track the river’s behavior more accurately and predict its peak, she said.

But Taylor added of the lessons learned in 1992: “I think that what we recognized is we needed more people, and this time we certainly have more people. Having more staff to watch so many things--that’s probably one of the smartest things we’ve done.”

The Sheriff’s Department also was better prepared.

Warnings of possible flooding went out late last week to the residents of the low-lying mobile home park in the Ventura River delta. The trailer dwellers left Monday night.

Then sheriff’s choppers flew over the Ventura and Santa Clara river bottoms Monday evening, their loudspeakers warning homeless people in campsites below that heavy rains were on the way.

Some left voluntarily, while others answered with obscene gestures and stuck to their ground, officials said.

But a few hours later, when the campsites were nearly under water, the sheriff’s expanded Search and Rescue Team used helicopters and lifelines to snatch 10 people off shrinking, debris-clogged islands in the swelling river.

The team was boosted in size from 15 to nearly 30 deputies and fortified with extra training after the 1992 floods, Sheriff’s Cmdr. Dick Purnell said.

With only three helicopters in the air, the team had one fewer aircraft than in 1992. A fourth is due to join the fleet later this year, Purnell said. But the team also managed to pull seven people out of flooded areas in Oak View and two at the Todd Road Barranca near Santa Paula, sheriff’s officials said.

The rescues focused attention on one flood phenomenon that Ventura officials want to change.

After watching deputies rescue a homeless man from the flooded river bottom, Ventura’s mayor and five of the six other council members said they will order police patrols of the area immediately to keep homeless people out.

“I’m determined that this can’t happen again,” Councilman Gary Tuttle said. “It’s time for us, as a council, to help to prevent disasters like this. . . . We lost lives before, and we are likely to lose it again if we leave things as they are.”

Tuttle said he and the rest of the council will meet this week to decide how to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting anyone from living or loitering in the river bottom.

Another 1992 flood event repeated itself: the lower Calleguas Creek and Revolon Slough overflowed Tuesday, leaving vast tracts of neighboring farmland under water near Camarillo State Hospital and Oxnard.

Congress had given money to study plans for widening the flood channel, but the Board of Supervisors deemed it too expensive at the time, Deputy Public Works Director Alex Sheydayi said.

Rex Laird, head of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said some farmers may resent the dense development in eastern Ventura County that has produced rain runoff levels capable of pushing the channels over their banks.

But, he said, “Most of the growers that I’m privileged to deal with kind of take a lot of this in stride.”

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Major Floods

The Ventura River has been the source of six major floods since Ventura County began keeping records early this century. The intensity of each flood is measured in the rush of water in cubic feet per second. A cubic foot of water is about 7.5 gallons; a fire hydrant with a fully open valve gushes about one cubic foot per second.

In any given year, there is a 10% chance that a 10-year storm will occur. A 50-year storm is one that has occurred on average once every 50 years. Each year, there is a 2% chance of a 50-year storm.

Year Date Cubic feet Storm 1938 March 2 39,200 10-year 1969 Jan. 25 58,000 50-year Feb. 25 40,000 10-year 1978 Feb. 19 63,600 50-year 1992 Feb. 12 47,600 50-year 1995 Jan. 10 52,000 50-year

Source: Ventura County Flood Control Department

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County Rainfall

Here are rainfall figures from the Ventura County Flood Control Department for the 24-hour period ending at 8 p.m. Tuesday. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

Rainfall Rainfall Rainfall Normal rainfall Location last 24 hours since Jan. 3 since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 3.03 7.44 10.95 5.28 Casitas Dam 6.22 13.00 18.40 8.95 El Rio 3.82 7.80 13.48 5.58 Fillmore 4.37 10.00 14.37 7.42 Moorpark 2.64 6.89 9.94 5.57 Ojai 4.02 9.41 13.36 7.70 Upper Ojai 8.66 21.50 22.44 8.28 Oxnard 2.68 8.90 12.13 5.35 Piru 5.24 8.19 14.11 6.35 Santa Paula 3.27 6.10 12.60 6.74 Simi Valley 3.90 8.23 11.57 5.30 Thousand Oaks 3.66 8.86 11.54 5.67 Ventura 5.20 11.40 14.18 5.93 Govt. Center