Investigators, Victims’ Relatives Fill Many Local Hotels

As the search for bodies continued Tuesday, exhausted and devastated family members of the victims of Alaska Airlines Flight 216 began arriving in Ventura County.

At the same time, investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were setting up a command post at the Ventura Beach Inn, where they may stay for the next several weeks trying to unlock the mystery of the airline disaster.

The first family members to reach the area arrived at the Holiday Inn in Ventura at 3:30 p.m., traveling in a large van driven by an employee of Alaska Airlines.

The group of three men and three women--one middle-aged couple and four younger adults--appeared extremely fatigued. Several had reddened eyes.

They were whisked directly into the hotel, bypassing the checkout desk and carrying their small bags directly to their rooms. They gave no comment to news media.

About an hour after they checked in, the group met with grief counselors at the hotel. Family members asked questions on forthcoming plans and what they could expect of airline and law enforcement officials.

Area hotels and Ventura County sheriff’s deputies had been bracing for the arrival of families since shortly after the Monday afternoon crash.

More than 40 rooms at the Holiday Inn were held by Alaska Airlines, which reserved 35 rooms at the Country Inn and Suites in Port Hueneme and more rooms at several other hotels. They include the Best Western in downtown Ventura and the Sheraton Hotel in the Ventura Harbor area.

At the Country Inn in Ventura, about 60 rooms were made available for the victims’ families, NTSB investigators, and FAA, Coast Guard and Alaska Airline officials.

Mark LeBlanc, the company’s director of operations, said executives offered the rooms--as well as an undisclosed number of rooms at three other sites--so the occupants could be free to focus on the grave tasks at hand.

“It was just one less thing they have to do,” LeBlanc said.

By late afternoon, the officials and families had not yet arrived at the hotels, a manager said.

Country Inn employees were also struggling to accommodate walk-in customers who overnight found there were no vacancies at hotels and motels in the local beach communities.

Those turned away included Coast Guard officials and bedraggled helicopter pilots, who had spent the night searching the water for survivors.

“We are trying to accommodate everyone we can,” said Silvia Bernard, general manager of the Country Inn and Suites. “But major hotels in Hueneme, Ventura and Camarillo are all sold out.”

At the Holiday Inn, guests and employees watched continuous coverage of the crash on several televisions in the hotel’s Breakers Bar, which overlooks surfers and waves breaking against Ventura Pier.

“Around here, we never experience anything like this,” hotel manager Robert Swain said. “You think about your own family and try to do what you can.”

Beginning in the early afternoon, about a dozen investigators with the NTSB and Alaska Airlines gathered at the Ventura Beach Hotel, situated within half a mile of Ventura Harbor.

The group, mostly men in casual clothes and overnight bags, gathered in a second-floor conference room, where it set up an easel and containers of coffee and pastries. At one point, two of the investigators left the hotel and returned with bags of office supplies. Several of the investigators, dressed in pilot uniforms, declined to comment on the investigation.

Hotel employees said Alaska Airlines had reserved several rooms for family and friends of victims of the crash.

McFarling is a Times staff writer. Blake is a Times Community News reporter. Times staff writers Hugo Martin, Louis Sahagun and Joe Mozingo contributed to this story.