Storm Front Weakens, Cleanup Begins

After a week of relentless and damaging storms, Ventura County residents received half a day of sunshine Sunday, but a return of showers by midafternoon sent residents back inside and scurrying to prepare for possible flooding.

But the continued precipitation, estimated to total less than half an inch by this morning, didn’t cause nearly the problems of last week’s storms.

Among the minor storm-related problems Sunday was a lightning strike in Camarillo. A home in the 1200 block of Dara Street was hit at about 3:45 p.m., leaving several burn holes in the home’s roof. But the strike did not ignite a fire, and there were no injuries, said a Ventura County Fire Department spokeswoman.

Some county residents ventured outdoors to enjoy the patchy sunshine early in the day. Others cleaned up the mud, twigs and debris scattered by Saturday’s squalls. Those who had suffered the most significant damage squirreled away sandbags and called their flood-insurance adjusters.

Looking at Sunday’s docile skies, they all crossed their fingers and wished that the weather forecast would hold true.

According to meteorologists, the worst could be over for a week or so.

“Looks like we’re going to be drying out,” said meteorologist John Sherwin of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “There might be a shot of showers Tuesday night, but that should hit Santa Barbara and northward. Even if you do see rain Tuesday night, it’s not going to be anything like you’ve been seeing.”

Apart from Sunday’s light showers, officials from WeatherData and the National Weather Service are saying the same thing: The coast is clear.

Forecasters with the National Weather Service in Oxnard expect partly cloudy skies today and Tuesday, with a slight chance of morning showers.

WeatherData’s Sherwin believes the week will be storm-free, except for light action Tuesday. That’s despite a stack of Pacific storms backed up as far west as Japan, which are expected to hit Northern California but most likely miss Ventura County. High temperatures should range in the low to high 60s all week.

“Let’s hope they’re right,” said Ojai resident Chris Roe. “If there is a God up there, he needs to stop the rain or send us the ark--we don’t care which.”

Roe and her neighbors on Avenida de la Vereda found their street, cars, garages and homes swamped not once, but twice, last week. By the time they had mucked things out after last Tuesday’s deluge, Saturday’s hit.

“Our street looks like a war zone,” she said Sunday, while waiting for a hired heavy-equipment operator to arrive to clear the sodden mess. “A wall of mud came through here, so we’ve got mud, cinder blocks and sandbags everywhere. . . . My flood insurance is worth $184,000, and I’m assuming my damage is going to take every penny of it.”

Roe’s damage includes a trailer, two homes, a pickup truck, a Chevy Suburban and two classic cars--a ’68 Corvette and a ’65 GTO. Some of her neighbors fared worse.

Unwilling to quite believe the weathermen, Roe and the street’s other residents stacked more sandbags Sunday and eyed the gathering clouds.

Farther down California 33, Dorothy and John Mimms surveyed the damage from an 8-foot boulder that rolled down a steep hill, skipped over their retaining wall and smacked the rear corner of the Oak View house they rent.

While county Fire Department officials arranged sandbags and placed a tarp on the boulder-studded hill behind the house, John Mimms described the events that began about 6 p.m. Saturday.

“We heard a rumble and didn’t have any idea of what it was--we were more concerned with the flooding at the front of the house,” he said. “All of a sudden, something hits the house--I thought it was an earthquake. It smashed the back living room wall.”

Because fire officials are worried about other slides, the Mimmses will spend a second night at Los Padres Inn.

“The boulder is just sitting there,” Mimms said. “There’s no way to get it out. They’ll have to jack-hammer it to pieces.”

American Red Cross workers spent the afternoon serving hot coffee and snacks to Port Hueneme families whose homes were swamped by flood waters last week.

“This is the first food I’ve had all day,” said Cheryl Ormeno, 48, as she munched on a doughnut and gulped hot cocoa while kneeling on her sopping bedroom rug, leafing through her belongings.

“We’re completely waterlogged,” said Roberto Amezcua, 38, who lives across from the Ormenos in a rented cottage on Surfside Drive. “The water just broke through the wall and destroyed the floor.”

Amezcua said he planned to take his wife and young children back to the Port Hueneme Red Cross shelter for dinner and to spend the night.

A reported 44 displaced people stayed there Saturday night, said Red Cross spokesman Tom Busk.

The Red Cross also planned to keep open an emergency shelter in Casitas Springs, which was particularly hard hit in Saturday’s quick-moving storm.

Sunday’s temporary respite from the storms that pummeled the county for more than a week gave rain-weary residents a chance to dry out, mop up and shake off acute cases of cabin fever.

Ventura’s Promenade had an almost festival-like atmosphere with dogs scampering down the littered beach and families who had traded their galoshes for sneakers to enjoy the day out.

“We’ve been waiting for a window to take a ride with the kids, and it looks like this is it,” said Kevin Cramer as his wife, Eyvette, and sons Jonathon and Andrew suited up for a bicycle ride down Rincon Parkway.

Robert Byl of Ventura spent the morning in the saddle of his bicycle, soaking up the episodic rays of sunshine and looking at what the storms and flooding left behind.

“I’m out surveying the damage,” he said while peering down at the muddy rush of the Ventura River. “It’s a mess. . . . Lots of water, sand and mud everywhere.”

For others it was a chance to roll up the pants legs, don a beat-up hat and comb Ventura’s littered beaches for knickknacks and change that may have washed ashore.

“We’re out here doing a little treasure hunting,” said Raul Rodriguez of Santa Paula, who with his sons Joseph and Ivan poked around the piles of tangled flotsam. So far they had found more than a dozen tennis balls, head-high lengths of bamboo and a deflated basketball.

“None of this is valuable, but these sticks will help when we hike,” he added.

Across town at Olivas Park Golf Course, die-hard duffers were not deterred by the spongy greens.

“Our numbers are a little down because of the rain, but we’re open and they’re out there playing,” said the pro shop’s Brian Moore. “The course is soggy, but it’s definitely playable.”

The lull also gave emergency workers time to work on fixing a sinkhole on Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks. A rupture of a storm drain that travels beneath the street caused the road to cave in Friday.

Frank Cote, owner of JFJ Construction, said he couldn’t predict when his company would have the 20-foot hole near Thousand Oaks High repaired. A seven-member crew from his Camarillo-based company was finishing up a 12-hour shift.

“The weather will dictate when we’ll be done,” he said as he stood in the afternoon downpour.

Cote said the most difficult part--shoring up an access tunnel to allow workers to get to the heart of the repair--had been completed.

Not far away, about 10 public works employees and contractors scrambled to repair an access road to the narrow Hill Canyon on Sunday so they could assess new damage to a sewer main that first burst Tuesday.

Working frantically for three days and nights, workers had patched the sewer main with whatever materials they had on hand by early Friday, only to have the repair fail within two hours.

With a break in the storm, workers had a chance to order the correct parts and have them “trucked and flown in” from out of state, said Jim Cote, owner of Jetoc Construction Inc., which is working on the repair.

Sunday was spent spreading riprap to construct another access road and building a makeshift dam to divert water from the repair site, added Cote, who was caked in mud and dotted with calamine lotion from run-ins with poison oak in the canyon.

Weather permitting, the second repair could be complete by Thursday or Friday, he said. By then, 54 million to 60 million gallons of effluent could have run to the ocean, making it the worst sewage spill in Ventura County history.

Sunday’s half a day of sunshine also meant a break from TVs on the fritz and dead washing machines brought on by earlier power outages.

Except for 50 homes along Etting Road in north Oxnard, Southern California Edison customers in Ventura County enjoyed problem-free electric power on Sunday, according to Clara Potes-Fellow, a spokeswoman at Edison’s Rosemead headquarters.

The Etting Road blackout was caused by a tree crashing into a power pole, interrupting service at 7 a.m. Sunday. Workers were expected to install a new pole by late Sunday night.

Potes-Fellow said roving crews took advantage of rainless skies during the morning and early afternoon hours to prepare for the next round of storms.

They made repairs, inspected equipment for possible damage, and restocked local inventories of fuses, wires and connectors. Some Edison employees were given time off to rest up for anticipated emergencies, she said.

Kate Folmar is a Times staff writer and Coll Metcalfe is a correspondent. Correspondents Cathy Murillo and Robert Gammon also contributed to this story.

FATAL STORM: A heavy storm hits Baja California, killing 13 in flash flooding. A1

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

County Rainfall

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

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Rainfall Rainfall Normal rainfall Location last 24 hours since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 0.47 19.35 7.95 Casitas Dam 0.47 31.37 13.79 Casitas Rec. Center 0.47 30.16 13.74 Fillmore 0.59 23.07 11.17 Matilija Dam 0.59 30.52 15.56 Moorpark 0.51 19.92 8.61 Ojai 0.55 25.16 12.35 Upper Ojai 0.04 27.32 13.30 Oxnard 0.67 24.27 8.49 Piru 0.39 19.35 10.04 Port Hueneme 0.39 21.52 8.34 Santa Paula 0.59 23.31 10.36 Simi Valley 0.31 17.50 8.28 Thousand Oaks 0.83 21.29 8.92 Ventura Govt. Center 0.43 27.44 9.39

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