Point Mugu Naval Base Celebrates Survival : Military: Word that a federal commission formally removed it from a closure list sweeps across the facility.

Huddled in the back of an electronics truck, one ear cocked to a nearby radio, technician Terry Bruno pounded his fist in triumph as each commissioner cast a vote.

“Two, three, four,” he counted as members of the federal base-closing panel were voting to remove Point Mugu from a final closure list.

“That’s eight for Mugu!” he shouted a moment later, as the last commissioner opted to keep the base open. “It shouldn’t have happened in the first place. They did the right thing.”

As a federal panel in Washington was determining the immediate fate of the Point Mugu Navy base, hundreds of civilian employees and their families gathered on the soccer field to celebrate American Heritage Day.

And when Capt. Sel Laughter announced to the crowd that the Base Closure and Realignment Commission had reversed its May recommendation and removed the base--formally known as the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division at Point Mugu--from a closure list, the audience erupted in applause.

“That’s some good news,” electronic technician James Skiffington said, puffing much less nervously on a cigarette. “It couldn’t be any better.

“We’ve been sweating this out for a long time,” said Skiffington, who added that he remembers Point Mugu being considered for closure when he first arrived in the late 1960s.

“People care about this place,” he said. “They’ve got their homes here, their lives. It’s a good place to be.”

Word of the decision swept across the base within minutes.

From the soccer field to restaurants around the base, officers, enlisted sailors and civilian employees smiled and breathed easier, once again sheltered from the latest round of military downsizing.

“All of you should feel important about your job at Point Mugu,” Laughter told the audience at the American Heritage Day party, which featured booths celebrating various ethnicities.

The base “was under intense scrutiny for months and it held up,” he said. “It was our mission and our geographic position here, but I think it was all of you also.”

Navy civilian Michael Dunn had popped the question to his sweetheart 16 months ago.

But fear over losing his job as an inventory manager at Point Mugu kept him from setting a date with Arleen Shephard, an accounting technician who also works at the base.

“I can get married now that the commission came through,” he said, hugging his fiancee. “I’ll invite everyone from the commission to my wedding.”

Public works Supt. Rudy Alcantar, who has worked at the base for more than 27 years, joked that the decision means that he will have to postpone his retirement.

“I was hoping for an early out,” said Alcantar, who lives in Oxnard. “But I guess I’ll have to work for the next six years.”

Firefighter Gregg Oconor said the possibility of losing his job had hung over him for months.

“I was so worried because I have a family,” said Oconor, who has fought fires at Point Mugu for six years. “Now I can sleep at night without thinking about it.”

At Mugu’s Pizza & More, at the front gate of the Navy base, civilian workers and sailors ate lunch and reveled in their newfound job security.

“I was very concerned because my wife works here too,” said Dave Tersigni, an engineer of nine years who owns a home in Camarillo. “That would have meant all of our income would have gone away.”

Nonetheless, Tersigni and others said they were confident that the May recommendation to close Point Mugu would be overturned.

“We didn’t think there was much logic in the decision [to recommend that the base be closed],” Tersigni said. “It was political, not logical.

“We have some capabilities here that no one else has,” he said. “Some of our programs and facilities are nowhere else in the world.”

Charlie Harris was sitting at his computer terminal when the base-closing commission’s vote popped up on his screen in an electronic mail message.

“We would have had to scale back,” said Harris, an engineer with Northrup Grumman, which contracts with the Navy. “I might have been transferred to China Lake.”

Harris said he suspected all along that Point Mugu would be removed from the list of bases recommended for closure.

“The numbers they came up with for what it would cost to move were horrendous,” said Harris, finishing lunch at The Point restaurant near the main gate. “The move didn’t make any sense.”

* MAIN STORY: A1