Mudslides Feared as Rains Fall

Rainfall that began Tuesday and may continue today sparked fears of mudslides and flooding in Ventura’s fire-ravaged hillsides and canyons, but experts say there is little cause for concern.

The rain barely dampened the parched ground, and may actually be a boon--providing nourishment for seeds and roots straining to regenerate, they say.

“It’s early so the ground has the ability to absorb the rain,” said Ron Calkins, the city’s director of public works. “If rain hits now, the ground just soaks it up. Later, when the ground is saturated to capacity, is when you could have problems.”

In the wake of the fire that set Ventura’s hillsides ablaze Friday night, city officials will join other scorched communities up and down the California coast in assessing fire damage, and figuring out how best to shore up the newly bald hills before the winter rains come.

“After every fire, attention immediately turns to erosion control,” Calkins said.

But city officials can’t start their work yet.

First they need to bring in a state forestry expert. After a week of brush fires around California, the state faces a backlog of cities waiting for such assistance--and Ventura has to wait in line.

The resource forester works with a soil conservationist and flood control expert to take stock of damage in a certain area, and map out necessary steps to prevent mudslides and erosion.

“A resource forester and a rehabilitation team will go out . . . and bring in their ‘ologists’ who know what they are doing, and assess what needs to be done,” said Terrey Raley, Ventura County’s wildland fire officer. “But no one is out there yet. Right now every resource forester in California is on fires somewhere else in California.”

He said it will probably take a week to get a team sent to the approximately 400 acres of burned hillside in Ventura.

Meanwhile, storm clouds hang low over the city, and weather experts predict showers will dump up more than an inch of rain on Ventura by tonight.

As the city shifts its attention to prevention efforts, checking drainage ditches and surveying the damage, residents of Aliso Drive, whose houses sit in a canyon beneath steep blackened hillsides, pray that rains will not loosen the dirt above them.

They are fatalistic. They see floods, fires and mudslides as part of life in California.

“Obviously this mountain is really vulnerable to rains, but this is what living in Southern California is all about,” said resident Barry Simmons, who works for the Ventura City Fire Department. “If you choose to live here, that’s the risk you take.”

Other residents, too, see the fires and potential for mudslides as part of a natural cycle that man cannot disrupt. They have built concrete enforcement walls and drainage pipes to the street. Many residents have planted their yards with deep-rooted vegetation.

They do not see much more they can do.

Holding his Siamese cat Chaos in his arms, Bob Waller explained his thinking.

“That’s part of living here, working with the environment, with floods, fires and rains. We’ve had a bunch of these things happen already. But that doesn’t discourage us,” said Waller, whose house on Aliso Drive stands less than 100 feet from the scorched shadow the fire left on the hillside.

Even as Ventura maps out its erosion prevention strategy, experts are debating new methods to strengthen ground cover.

In past decades, the preferred strategy of erosion prevention has been to reseed hillsides--often with nonnative species.

But forestry experts are finding that the natural regeneration is the fastest and most effective way for the land to heal itself. Some sliding mud is inevitable.

“When seeding has been done, it has been done mostly for psychological reasons,” said Jerry Revard, parks supervisor for the city. “But it actually inhibits the growth of natural vegetation. The native plants often have to compete with seeded species.”

He says there is often pressure to seed because it takes the public time to catch up with science and research. He cited the area burned by the Grand fire last spring as a case in point. Some reseeding was done, but most recovery occurred in spots left to recover naturally.