Property Owners Assess Damages as Storm Cleanup Gets Underway

The rain was gone and the skies were clear--but the fear that gripped many Ojai Valley residents stuck Tuesday like caked-on river mud.

“It’s mostly psychological now,” 56-year-old Art Isgur said, keeping an eye on the horizon. “You see a cloud in the sky and you start shaking.”

Isgur was among two dozen east Ojai residents who watched helplessly Monday as rushing flood waters inundated their homes. On Tuesday, he and others began to clean up the mess left behind.

The storm also forced the evacuation of 72 people from the creekside campground where they live, but all were allowed back Tuesday. Red Cross volunteers shut down the evacuation center at Nordhoff High School where many spent the night.

All the evacuees were Ojai residents except for one Santa Barbara couple stranded by road closures. It was the first time the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center in Ojai since the 1995 floods.

“We had a good time,” said Ojai resident Kenda Thompson. “It was like a big slumber party.”

But she was eager to go home.

Thompson, her husband, Joseph, and their two children have lived at Camp Comfort in a 29-foot motor home for four years. She loves it there, saying the $420 they pay each month beats a house payment.

“We live there because we choose to,” she said. “Everybody is just one big, happy family.”

Meanwhile, road crews took advantage of dry weather to clear landslides from highways. California 150, the twisty route between Ojai and Santa Paula, remained closed by an undermined bridge.

And those rocked by the storm began calculating property damages and financial loss.

“It was about $10,000 on the last one, another $5,000 on this one,” said Dan Misiaszek, whose Avenida del Recreo house was damaged by flood waters three weeks ago.

Misiaszek applied for federal disaster assistance after the Feb. 3 storm. He also has flood insurance.

Misiaszek and Isgur, who live next to each other, are among those who have seen muddy waters surge up to their front steps with each passing storm system.

The problems began earlier this month when water in a flood-control channel altered its course and punched through a 7-foot-high concrete retaining wall on nearby Avenida de la Vereda, sending a torrent through the neighborhood.

Although residents and forestry crews put down sandbags to keep the stream at bay, Monday’s deluge proved too much. About 25 houses along Avenida del Recreo and Avenida de la Vereda were flooded.

When the waters receded, a thick coat of silt remained. Isgur’s driveway, garage and backyard were coated with about 6 inches of wet, dark soil. His house narrowly escaped damage.

“We’ve been very, very lucky,” he said. “I’ve never seen it like this before.”

Monday’s storm dropped 9 inches of rain in the mountains above Ojai and 3 to 4 inches in the city, swelling the normally dry stream beds that cut through the Ojai Valley.

Thacher and San Antonio creeks changed course in numerous places, carving away hillsides, breaking irrigation pipelines and uprooting citrus trees.

At Soule Park Golf Course, where the two creeks merge, roiling waters eroded about 25 yards of fairway on the seventh and 15th holes.

The river also severed irrigation lines to 14 holes, causing an estimated $100,000 in damage.

“It came within a few feet of taking the 15th green,” said golf pro Jim Allen, surveying the damage from a golf cart. “That’s never happened before.”

Allen said the river has not ripped through the golf course with such ferocity since the flood of 1969. The course was closed Tuesday but is expected to reopen today.

But golfers beware: Those who usually struggle to loft the ball over San Antonio Creek on holes 7 and 15 will need to get a little more muscle behind their swings.

“It will be a little tougher carry for a while,” Allen said.

* RELATED STORIES: A1, B3