Stretches of Coast Highway and California 118 Reopen

Ventura County’s recovery from a series of punishing storms took a large step forward late Tuesday, when officials reopened two principal roadways that had been closed for days--Pacific Coast Highway near Mugu Rock and California 118 near Somis.

“We had three [highways] that were giving us a fit, and we got two of them out of the way,” said Dave Servaes, a Caltrans regional manager in Camarillo.

The third major county highway closed by torrential rains last week is California 33, about 14 miles north of Ojai, where an enormous landslide will take months to remove.

Metrolink officials are still unable to estimate when commuter rail service from Oxnard will resume. And farm worker representatives said hundreds of field hands have been thrown out of work by crop damage.

Generally, however, Tuesday’s post-storm mood was upbeat, with federal emergency aid officials poised to arrive by Friday and no new major storm on the immediate horizon.

“We’re moving along and collecting damage assessments,” said county emergency services coordinator Laura Hernandez, who presented a $36-million laundry list of storm damage to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. “And we have the federal emergency teams coming out at the end of the week to collect damage assessments from individuals.”

Indeed, Ventura officials expect to begin attacking the mountains of debris on city beaches by Monday, with a full cleanup expected within a month if there are no more large storms, officials said.

“We had a lot of concerns and complaints in the past that we weren’t really picking up the beaches fast enough,” city parks official Mike Montoya said.

And state campgrounds at McGrath and Emma Wood state beaches are scheduled to reopen March 13. In a presentation to county supervisors, top officials lauded the ability of local emergency and public works agencies to coordinate efforts and avoid even worse damage.

“I think government probably operates best during an emergency,” Supervisor John K. Flynn said. “All the agencies come together.”

Hernandez and Sheriff Larry Carpenter credited months of training and mock exercises for helping emergency crews respond successfully to disaster scenes.

“All the training that we put in the last few years . . . worked as planned,” Carpenter said. “We don’t have everything perfect, but we get better every time and I firmly believe we do it better than everyone else.”

One telling fact about preparations for the recent storms, officials said, was that the county Fire Department alone distributed 67,000 sandbags--many of them filled by County Jail inmates--the equivalent of 35 tractor-trailer loads of sand.

Meanwhile, Judy Mikels, chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors, and Ventura County Public Works Director Art Goulet were in Washington to meet with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials.

They are seeking to boost federal aid to local governments, farmers, small businesses and private property owners.

County Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail told supervisors Tuesday that despite growing crop damage reports--now estimated at up to $19 million--Ventura County farmers will have the most trouble recouping their financial losses through FEMA.

He remembers only two farmers in his 18 years with the county agency who were able to obtain the agency’s low interest federal loans.

FEMA is willing to aid farmers only if their normal lending institutions refuse, he said, noting that growers need to be “almost destitute” to be eligible for federal assistance.

And even if farmers hit such a low, they have to tackle a mountain of documentation to prove it, McPhail said.

Applications for federal aid add up to 2 inches of single-spaced, small-type paperwork--information that at times must detail 20 years of production statistics to prove that a farmer sustained a loss, McPhail said.

“Agriculture is not going to get a great deal of help from the federal government,” McPhail said.

Eileen McCarthy, attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance in Oxnard, said she welcomes the arrival of federal aid teams, nonetheless.

“There’s millions of dollars in damage to crops, and these crops are labor-intensive,” she said. “So immediately we see loss in earnings for hundreds of farm workers. Then in the future, there’s going to be an effect on workers who would have harvested these ruined crops.”

What that means is that low-income farm workers have more dire prospects than other storm victims who are better off, she said. “As they lose their earnings, they can’t pay their rent and you see them losing their housing,” she said. “That’s why it’s so important for the FEMA people to reach out to the farm worker population.”

But Tuesday was a day of success for California Department of Transportation crews and relief for beleaguered county motorists whose patience has been strained by storm-caused detours for 10 days.

On Pacific Coast Highway, where boulders the size of cars had fallen, the road was reopened about 6 p.m. to two-lane traffic. Workers with flags will still be directing traffic today, as cleanup continues, Caltrans’ Servaes said.

Officials reopened California 118, a main route between east and west county, to automobile traffic about 4:30 p.m. Trucks are still banned, because the road over the battered Long Canyon Creek bridge is narrower due to storm damage.

Work crews lined the creek north of the bridge with big rocks and concrete and did the same sort of shoring under the bridge itself, Servaes said.

“Then we bridged over part of the bridge where there was a hole with steel beams and steel plates to keep the weight off of it,” he said.

But not far away, one roadside produce merchant--who had thought closure of California 118 was bad news--discovered the real tragedy of last week’s storms.

The Park family could only stand and watch in recent days as a rising creek next to their Somis Produce washed half the foundation from beneath the 40-year-old building.

The creek not only took half the building with it, but about $20,000 in equipment and inventory--and about $700 a day in business.

In an attempt to at least keep some money flowing in, Gi and Young Park and their son, Keith, are selling the salvaged produce under a blue tarp.

The family has applied for assistance through FEMA, but do not expect to even see an agency inspector for a couple more weeks. And by that time, there might not be much left to inspect.

“I have no idea what we’re going to do--we have no money,” Gi Park said.

Kelley is a Times staff writer; Warchol is a Times correspondent. Correspondents Dawn Hobbs and Coll Metcalfe also contributed to this report.

* MAIN STORY: A1