Landslide Closes a Main Highway Into Ojai Valley

Undermined by months of rain, a huge chunk of hillside collapsed and rolled across California 33 early Thursday, leaving Ojai Valley residents with just one way in and out of their community for more than 10 hours.

The slide along the Arnaz Grade between Oak View and Casitas Springs left residents with only California 150--already battered by this year’s storms and narrowed to just one lane in spots--as their connection to the outside.

But early morning commuters diverted from California 33 wound up stuck in traffic anyway. Drivers were backed up for nearly five miles along California 150, which snakes through Ojai, up past Sulphur Mountain and into Santa Paula.

For some commuters it took nearly four hours to reach Ventura, a trip that usually takes about a half hour.

California Highway Patrol officers spent most of the day turning drivers around.

“I hate to be the one to bring the bad news but it’s going to be several hours,” Officer Jeff Barbao told drivers early Thursday at a roadblock near the slide. “You’re going to have to turn it around. If you want to get through, your best bet is to take the 150, but you’re going to hit a lot of traffic. My advice is to take the day off.”

Didde and Wayne Chastain took Barbao’s advice.

They waited in Oak View at the Java 33 coffeehouse for a while, but when they heard it might be more than five hours before the road opened, Didde said she gave up on going to work in Ventura.

She spent the morning with her husband watching a crew of California Department of Transportation workers attack the slide with bulldozers.

“You don’t realize it until it is closed, but [California 33] is a vital artery,” said Wayne Johnson, a Caltrans supervisor watching over the work.

Mudslides that have cut off other routes into the Ojai Valley have made California 33 even more important, Johnson said. Santa Ana Road is closed, and California 150 to Santa Barbara is also shut down.

“So if one of those goes out we’ve got to do everything we can to clear the way,” he said.

Johnson estimated that from 600 to 1,000 cubic yards of dirt and boulders rolled onto the road when the hillside gave way about 4:30 a.m. Thursday. The slide covered three of the four lanes.

A few of the large boulders bounced over the roadway and dropped 100 feet into the rain-swollen San Antonio Creek.

It took 60 to 100 truckloads to clear the slide. As a temporary measure, crews dumped the dirt and boulders along the center of the highway between Casitas Springs and Ventura.

The biggest concern for work crews were two car-sized boulders teetering on the steep hillside above the road. Johnson wanted the rocks knocked down before he would open the road, so the crews kept cutting away at the slide in an effort to knock the boulders free. By about 11 a.m., the biggest of the rocks had slipped from its footing and tumbled down the hill, smashing into the road and shaking the earth when it hit.

“Can you imagine what that would have done to a car,” Johnson said, relieved to have finally removed the biggest danger.

Although most people either used California 150 to get in and out of Ojai or simply gave up trying, others waited it out in Oak View or Casitas Springs.

Restaurant owners Felipe and Felimon Sandobal, who own the Feldan Cafe, spent most of the day trying to determine how they might be able to walk into Oak View so they could open their cafe.

The road was closed for about 10 hours in February because of a slide, but the pair had reached the cafe before the road was closed. This time, however, their waitresses were at the cafe, but they were not.

“Who’s going to cook the food if we don’t get there?” Felipe asked, while the two waited down the road from the slide at the Casitas Market in Casitas Springs.

It took until nearly 3 p.m. for crews to set up concrete barriers along the side of the road to prevent more sliding. The four-lane road was reduced to just two lanes, so a geologist could examine the hillside and decide how to shore it up, officials said. Caltrans officials estimate the work will cost $300,000.