Landslide Wipes Out Ventura Apartments

Like bad guests who just keep coming back, flood and mud gripped Ventura County on Monday, turning roads into slippery obstacle courses and slippery hillsides into looming catastrophes.

Highways were closed, power failed, streams of churning brown water poured into homes and thousands of people were moved from harm’s way. Everywhere, residents glumly wondered just what else would be in store.

“I’m sick to death of this,” said La Conchita resident Fiona Bremmer as she walked past a row of homes that were splintered by a mudslide in 1995. “I didn’t sleep here last night and I probably won’t tonight. I’m afraid of the mud.”

A massive landslide in west Ventura crushed an already evacuated 12-unit apartment complex at 612 Cedar St. at about 8:15 p.m.

The slide pushed the complex into a neighboring apartment building sitting farther downhill, forcing residents from as many as 10 units to quickly grab a few belongings and evacuate.

“My heart is still pumping 100 miles per hour,” said evacuee Amy Hoffman. “It just went ‘Poom!’ ”

City officials have monitored the sliding hill for the past two weeks, clearing the now-crushed building of its residents last Thursday and keeping a close eye on the hillside throughout Monday.

Still, no one predicted this.

“We certainly didn’t expect this catastrophic of an event,” said Mike Maher, a city fire official.

City engineers were due to gauge the risk to some 300 other residents who live in apartments along the same unstable hillside. Red Cross volunteers were expected to arrange temporary shelter.

Monday’s storm was an equal-opportunity disaster, wreaking havoc in virtually every part of the waterlogged county. In Thousand Oaks, a condominium was invaded by mud. In Santa Paula, nearly one-tenth of the city’s population was briefly moved to higher ground as a precaution. The roads were a mess all over.

However, for the sheer scale of its mud-caked chaos, the Ojai Valley was perhaps worse off than most other places.

More than 5 inches of rain fell on hillsides already weakened by previous storms. Toppled trees shot down creeks like so many toys.

Earlier in the day, county Sheriff’s Deputy Bud McCracken pointed to an oak the size of a pickup truck as it tumbled through San Antonio Creek, an ordinarily dry gully, which Monday was on the verge of overflowing.

“Our concern is that it isn’t going to take too much of that to dam it up,” he said.

The creek rushes by Camp Comfort, where officials evacuated 72 people. The dozens of transient families who live in trailers and campers there were directed to a shelter at Nordhoff High School.

It was the first mandatory evacuation in the Ojai Valley since the winter storms descended three weeks ago.

“We’ve had a couple of dry runs,” said Sheri Connelly, who runs the park with her husband. On two other occasions this season, campers have been asked to evacuate because of rising creek levels.

This time, though, the danger appeared more imminent; amid the tangle of branches rushing by in the roaring creek, oranges bobbed.

“That’s always been our thing: You see oranges--get out,” Connelly said. “It means Upper Ojai’s flooded. Time to move.”

By early afternoon, Thacher Creek in Upper Ojai had rampaged through an orange orchard, and the heavy rains had flooded 25 homes in an east Ojai neighborhood.

“There are rapids right here,” said homeowner Greg Williams. “They’re going straight into the garage.”

Williams had put up wooden barriers and piled sandbags around his house, but they proved useless. He watched and waited as water came within inches of swamping his home.

“My house stands 5 feet above the ground,” he said, “and it’s got a foot to go.”

By evening, waters throughout the neighborhood had subsided.

In an earlier incident, a sheriff’s helicopter had to pluck two workers at an Ojai Valley ranch from a rudimentary cable car dangling over swollen Santa Ana Creek.

Gloria Vasquez, 40, and Bert Allan Blume, 38, both employees at Taft Ranch, were treated for hypothermia at Ojai Valley Community Hospital and released.

The open-air car had stopped over the roiling creek after its pulleys jammed. The helicopter lowered a rescue swimmer, who hoisted each worker back up. Ranch hands use the cable car to cross the creek when flood waters wash out their road.

“They weren’t playing around,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Keith Parks. “This is actually a procedure.”

In Ventura, scores of slide areas, some larger than football fields, scarred the hillsides off Ventura Avenue. Some were dumping tons of syrupy mud on the streets below.

“No way I’m moving back into here,” said Jose Vargas as he hurried to remove his family’s possessions from his Cedar Street apartment, which was destroyed a few hours later. “It’s just too dangerous. . . . I don’t want to go through anything like this again.”

More than a dozen tenants at the Cedar Apartments were evacuated last week after a hillside abutting the property showed signs of giving way. A separate building half a block away was evacuated Sunday.

Next door to the damaged Cedar Apartments, Charlie Kellogg scrambled around with sandbags to divert a muddy stream flowing from the hillside. The mud had already toppled a 10-foot retaining wall protecting his property.

“Right now I’m just trying to save my house,” he said, clearing rainwater from his eyes. “It’s a mess down there, a total mess.”

In the tiny seaside town of La Conchita, residents were understandably nervous. In 1995, they were hit with a devastating mudslide and they have been warned ever since about a repeat experience.

“With all this rain, who knows what’ll happen?” asked Romero Ceja. “Tomorrow we may be at the beach.”

Ceja, 84, had his suitcase packed. He said he’d spent Sunday night in his frontyard, watching and listening for rumblings from the hillside above his home. A tongue of viscous mud inched down the street as Ceja, in a yellow slicker, kept his vigil.

In Thousand Oaks, Michael Breitner never saw it coming. Around noon Monday, his two-story condominium was hit by a mudflow after a saturated hillside gave way, loosing a river of oatmeal-thick muck onto his property.

Landscaping at the back of his house on Monte Sereno Drive was wiped out, and some mud seeped through the building’s foundation and into his living room. A foot-deep moat of soupy debris surrounded the house.

“It’s a lot worse outside than it is inside,” said Breitner, who was called at work by a neighbor bearing the bad news. “It’s still scary.”

The mud clogged a drain at the end of Breitner’s cul-de-sac, and muck rose knee-high, said Sgt. Brian Kerr of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

Other condos nearby appeared high and dry, he said.

Motorists also suffered in Monday’s storm.

Traffic backed up more than three miles from the Arnaz Grade during Monday morning’s rush hour when a mudslide crashed across Highway 33, the main road through the Ojai Valley.

Several additional slides hit California 33 during the day. It remained shut until early evening.

Flooding from the Ventura River shut down the Ventura Freeway. Southbound lanes opened and crews worked late Monday to clear the northbound lanes as well.

At times, sections of California 126 were closed, and then reopened.

In Ventura, a huge eucalyptus tree crashed onto Harbor Boulevard, blocking the southbound lanes.

A big rig carrying lemons tipped over at the entrance to the southbound Conejo Grade truck scales at 11:10 a.m., trapping the driver inside his cab.

“It looks like the rain and wind and his speed coming into the scales contributed to this accident,” said Sgt. John Novak of the California Highway Patrol.

The driver, 43-year-old Daryoush Osana of Glendale, suffered minor abrasions. He was taken to Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.

If the roads were risky, staying home and watching TV was impossible for almost 10,000 Ventura residents. Avenue Cable TV was knocked off the air from late morning until about 3:30 p.m.

The rains cut off power for 24,000 Southern California Edison customers beginning at 6 a.m. with outages in Ojai. By 4 p.m., some 7,000 were still without electricity in Ojai, Fillmore, Camarillo and midtown Ventura.

An Edison spokesman said power was to be restored by 11 p.m.

Customers of some other utilities were equally inconvenienced.

In Thousand Oaks, a 12-inch water main burst around 7 p.m. Sunday due to ground movement. Nearly 800 customers of the California Water Service Co. were without water all night, but service was restored early Monday, said Doug Varney, general manager of the Westlake Village utility.

He said four concrete fittings along the main were pulled apart by underground shifting of the sodden soil.

“It looks like the ground was pretty saturated even before the rain came in,” he said.

Customers are being served by a nearby line during repairs, which were to be completed by Monday night, Varney said.

The repairs clogged Thousand Oaks Boulevard with emergency vehicles. Hundreds of Westlake High students were late for class, said school receptionist Rosa Kennedy.

Near Faria Beach, a weather researcher from the University of Oklahoma found himself trapped between mudslides. Swarn Gill had driven his high-tech mobile Doppler radar truck from Monterey, tracking the storm for the National Weather Service.

Inside his cab, he looked over computers and gear used to measure the density of moisture in the clouds. He seemed to enjoy his break as the storm roared past.

“I wasn’t going anywhere anyway,” he said.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Tracy Wilson, Coll Metcalfe and Scott Hadly, and correspondents Troy Heie, Dawn Hobbs and Richard Warchol.

(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 7 p.m. Monday. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

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Rainfall Rainfall Rainfall last 24 since since Normal rainfall Location hours Saturday Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 2.01 3.19 27.75 9.16 Casitas Dam 4.21 6.89 44.78 16.26 Casitas Rec. Center 4.96 7.56 44.79 16.37 Fillmore 2.05 2.96 31.34 13.15 Matilija Dam 7.36 9.41 47.51 18.64 Moorpark 2.29 3.98 28.27 9.99 Ojai 2.29 4.25 33.31 14.68 Upper Ojai 7.32 9.21 41.82 15.92 Oxnard 2.32 3.30 30.03 10.02 Piru 0.39 3.34 25.75 11.72 Port Hueneme 1.61 2.32 27.97 9.83 Santa Paula 4.37 6.57 33.76 9.83 Simi Valley 2.20 3.5 27.99 12.31 Thousand Oaks 3.15 4.13 26.99 10.45 Ventura Govt. Center 2.52 3.66 35.09 11.08

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Ventura County Storm Damage

1. Nordhoff Ridge: Most rain falls, about 9 inches since storm began, funneling runoff into swollen Ojai Valley waterways.

2. East Ojai: Flooding along Thacher Creek tributary swamps several homes flooded two weeks ago.

3. Santa Ana Creek: Two employees of Taft Ranch rescued by helicopter after they are caught crossing the Santa Ana Creek.

4. Camp Comfort: 72 residents evacuated as San Antonio Creek fills.

5. Arnaz Grade: California 33 closed because of mudslides.

6. La Conchita: Street flooding and mudflows threaten homes.

7. Cedar Street: More people leave apartment complex threatened by mudslides.

8. Ventura Freeway: Shut down for hours because of Ventura River flooding; Pacific Coast Highway closed between Seacliff and Ventura Freeway.

9. Ventura River mouth: Supports under Union Pacific bridge over Ventura River undermined, closing bridge for weeks. Phone lines damaged.

10. De Anza Middle School: Eleven students unable to return to homes in Ojai Valley an La Conchita as of late afternoon.

11. Santa Paula: About 2,000 residents evacuated as Santa Paula Creek threatens to overflow levee in city’s southeast.

12. Fillmore: Four homes evacuated. Schools close about 1 p.m., sending students home early as Sespe Creek swells.

13. Piru: Schools close early as Piru Creek fills.

14. Camarillo: Metrolink service halted after railroad track is undermined; commuters forced to take buses.

15. Oxnard: Badly damaged Channel Islands Harbor seawall suffers even more damage as storm drains erode channel bank.

16. Port Hueneme: Hueneme School District students told to stay home Tuesday as a precaution.

17. Conejo Grade: A big rig topples on the Ventura Freeway at the top of the Conejo Grade, one of several accidents in Thousand Oaks.

18. Newbury Park: Most intense rain of the day recorded --a rate of 3 1/2 inches per hour-- for a short time in midafternoon. Hillside behind condos off Lyn Road are threatened by slipping hillside.

19. Pacific Coast Highway: Closed between Las Posas Road and northern Los Angeles County because of flooding and mudslides.

FYI

The Hueneme School District is closed today. District officials said a number of employees live in Santa Barbara, Ojai and Fillmore, and might have a difficult time making it to work.

RAIN: Latest storm dumps 9 more inches in Ventura County. A1