City Removes Tons of Trash From Oxnard Home

Kay Brunner could only watch as a city cleanup crew hauled load after load of debris from his yard Thursday.

“They’re taking everything I’ve got,” Brunner lamented. “This is terrible. I need a lot of that stuff, I really need it.”

After more than three years of asking Brunner to clean up the refuse in his yard, followed by citations, city officials finally took that task into their own hands and cleared, literally, tons of material from the driveway, frontyard and backyard of Brunner’s F Street home.

“This has got to be one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen,” said code enforcement Officer Joe Avelar, a 20-year veteran. “There is just so much of this junk. It’s a real hazard.”

The “junk” Avelar referred to was piled up to the roof and surrounded Brunner’s home. In addition to the rotted newspapers, bald tires and rotting palm fronds, workers carted out bags of fertilizer, broken bicycles, old motors, cabinets, wood and even a rusty length of anchor chain.

A hazardous materials team helped remove one bottle of acetylene--a highly explosive gas used in welding.

Although city officials received complaints about Brunner’s property for more than a decade, they were hamstrung because city codes did not allow them to act. Two years ago, however, officials approved a regulation allowing the city to take action if the property was determined to be a public nuisance, threatening the safety of the community.

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As the crews worked and the heaps grew smaller, neighbors breathed a sigh of relief.

“A lot of that stuff back there scared me,” said Greg Tomczyk, Brunner’s next-door neighbor. “It’s dangerous, I mean there’s fertilizer and God knows what else back there.”

Tomczyk, who has lived next door for 10 years, said that over the years he has given things to Brunner, thinking he was going to sell them.

“It’s kind of funny, but I’ve seen them [the cleanup crew] throwing things out that I gave him five or 10 years ago,” Tomczyk added.

Code enforcement officers responded to Brunner’s mountainous piles of debris after he failed to comply with city notices ordering him to clean his property.

Brunner said he appealed the notices, but never received any reply from the city. Avelar said the appeals were turned down, and Brunner was notified.

He added that he has been trying to clear his property by selling some of the stuff, but various “family emergencies” kept him from completing the task.

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Avelar estimated that crews would remove more than 25 tons of debris from around the home at a cost of about $8,000.

Brunner will be forced to pay, either outright, or through a tax assessment.

“Any way we’ll get our money,” Avelar said.

Besides the public nuisance violation, officers estimated they will cite Brunner with more than 90 other misdemeanor building, electrical and safety code violations.

Brunner’s home is packed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with boxes, old newspapers and various odds and ends. The front door is blocked so it opens only halfway. Every room in the house is choked with boxes and piles of clutter. Even the kitchen is unusable, with boxes blocking access to the stove, refrigerator and sink.

The house’s only open space is a narrow path, barely a foot wide, that snakes through the home. For light, Brunner ran extension cords along the walls of boxes, and candles were precariously placed next to yellowed copies of newsprint.

Code enforcement Officer Larry McGrath said that when they arrived, one of the candles had begun to burn through one of the boxes.

“It would be a nightmare if this house ever went up [in flames],” McGrath said. “I’m almost surprised it hasn’t already.”

Brunner watched the cleanup crew throw several lamps, a fire extinguisher and waterlogged sheets of particle board into the dumpster.

“I don’t how I’m going to be able to pay for this,” he said. “You read about this stuff in the newspaper but you never think it’s going to happen to you.”