Motorists Find Routes Blocked by Mud, Water

Motorists were stranded all over western Ventura County on Saturday, cut off from their destinations by rock falls in Ojai, mudslides near La Conchita and the floodwaters of the Ventura River.

The river surged over its banks late Friday and cut off all northbound traffic on the Ventura Freeway between Ventura and Santa Barbara throughout the day Saturday. For most of the morning, southbound traffic was also blocked by slippery muck left by the river as well as a mudslide above La Conchita.

And as rain pelted the coastline once again Saturday night, California Highway Patrol officials said a new mudslide had tumbled across the northbound lanes of the Ventura Freeway about a mile north of California 33.

Earlier in the day, cars backed up along the Ventura Freeway north of La Conchita and south of California 33 in Ventura for hours, waiting for Caltrans crews to shovel mud off the roads--the second time this year that floods have forced the closure of the county’s main roadway.

Throughout the western portion of the county, the storm brought major transportation problems. Roads through the Ojai Valley were almost completely severed by mudslides and rock falls that cut escape routes to Carpinteria, Maricopa and Santa Paula. California 126 through Santa Paula was also blocked in both directions for part of the day.

Hoping to find some way of getting around the roadblocks at the flooded Ventura Freeway, hundreds of motorists found their way by side roads to California 150 in the Ojai Valley--only to find it also blocked by mud.

By noon Saturday, a line of cars more than a mile long snaked down California 150 near Lake Casitas, some drivers led by an inaccurate taped Caltrans phone message that proclaimed California 150 was open.

“Nothing has been accurate,” groused Carpinteria resident Kendall Leeper), who was trying to find a route home from Los Angeles, while sitting alongside the wet highway in her parked compact.

On the other side of the mudslide across California 150, a caravan of about 20 cars tried to forge south through slick mud toward Ojai. But the impatient motorists hit a major roadblock when they reached the other side--California Highway Patrol Officer D. J. Webb, ticket book in hand.

“Be careful and drive safely and don’t go by those ‘road closed’ signs, “ Webb told the lead driver as he wrote the motorist a traffic ticket.

“All these people have gone around the ‘road closed’ sign,” Webb said, pointing to the line of mud-splattered cars. “They made it this far . . . but our concern is that if Caltrans or county road personnel are working . . . somebody is going to get hurt.”

Not all the cars made it, either; one motorist bogged down in clay-based soil congealed in foot-high mounds on both lanes of the road.

“We got a lot of irate people and I understand that,” Webb said. “But we have to look at safety. We have to look at the big picture. You can’t take 150, you can’t take the 101 or the 5 and the 126 was closed. There is nowhere to go.”

In Ventura, two busloads of weary travelers from Los Angeles International Airport milled around a restaurant parking lot in a persistent drizzle, bitterly mulling over their options.

They were doubly stranded.

They had boarded buses from LAX to Santa Barbara after the storm shut down the Santa Barbara Airport to their puddle-jumper flight, then the flooding on the Ventura Freeway cut off their alternate route.

“This is just like the saga that never ends,” said an exhausted, bleary-eyed Christian Fagerlund, 21, of Santa Barbara.

After a grueling 27-hour flight from Indonesia, the UC Santa Barbara student had spent several hours at LAX waiting for the bus ride, only to be stranded in the parking lot of a restaurant.

The Santa Barbara Air Bus operators offered him and his fellow passengers three options: Take a circuitous, five-hour bus trip through Los Angeles and Bakersfield to Santa Barbara; ride back to LAX for a commuter flight to Santa Barbara Airport that by then might be reopened, or catch a helicopter flight home from Oxnard Airport.

Fagerlund braced himself for the long bus ride.

“I don’t have any money for a helicopter, so it’s my only shot to get home,” he said.

Beth Curry, a Southern Methodist University student trying to get home on the bus from LAX to San Luis Obispo, also picked the bus, but with defeated sentiments. “I’m on spring break, for only one week, and one-seventh of it I have to spend in Hell.”

In all, Caltrans skip-loaders and plows dug feverishly Saturday at six mudslides blocking the Ventura Freeway from Ventura to the Santa Barbara County line.

Caltrans hopes to have the northbound lanes open by this morning, but fresh rain and new slides could push that back to Sunday night, Caltrans supervisor Dave Chapman said.

But California 150 near Ojai could stay shut for several weeks, he said.

“There are multiple slides. The road is washed out in several spots. We had some slides actually buckle the highway. It’s not fit for the general public.”

Correspondents Julie Fields and Tracy Wilson contributed to this report.