Glitch-Free Eve Filled With Glee

The lights kept shining, the gas kept pumping, the taps kept running, and the parties kept rocking as the most hyped New Year’s moment in history finally arrived in Ventura County.

Staying up to monitor computer systems through the wee hours on Saturday, officials who had prepared for massive Y2K failures stifled massive yawns. No trouble was reported.

Crime also took a holiday. Police throughout the county said the millennial New Year’s Eve produced less mayhem than an ordinary, non-millennial Friday night.

But it was no ordinary night. Fancy restaurants and hotel ballrooms were packed. In churches and on mountaintops, celebrants reflected on the marvelous possibilities of a new year, a new century, a new millennium. At countless parties, people quaffing champagne toasted their continued survival, congratulating themselves for viewing the prospect of worldwide collapse with common sense and not holing up in backyard bunkers.

Under a huge white tent that stretched across a cul de sac in Newbury Park, dozens of neighbors--women in slinky gowns and men in sharp dinner jackets--boogied the night away.

“I love celebrating here,” said Daniel Grumney. “If the world comes to an end, I’m 60 feet away from my house.”

For the record, the world did not end. In fact, people overseeing the thousands of computer systems theoretically endangered by the Y2K bug had little to do but watch the nonstop TV coverage of millennial galas around the world.

At the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme, a Navy official manning the emergency operations center summed up the evening’s deflating nature.

“Man, Elton John sure has gotten fat,” he said.

Manuals labeled “Y2K” lined a conference table, but were scarcely touched. The 12 officials on hand kept a close eye on everything from the base’s air-conditioning systems to its security gates, but calls at midnight confirmed what they already knew: situation normal. A similar crew monitored computer systems at the Point Mugu Naval Air Station.

The evening’s biggest glitch: a naval base in the Midwest reported a heating system failure and warned West Coast stations that the same could happen to them.

It didn’t.

It was a similarly tranquil time for the 50 law enforcement, paramedic and utility officials huddled around computers and TVs at the emergency operations headquarters beneath the County Government Center.

Throughout the night, word came in from every corner of the county. There were no power outages. No water supplies were in peril. No computer malfunctions had tripped the county’s records systems, released the locks on jail cells or otherwise put citizens at risk.

“This was an incredible evening--not only for a New Years’s Eve, but it’s quiet for a Friday night,” said Sheriff Bob Brooks, who began sending the SWAT team and special reinforcements home about 1:15 a.m.--hours earlier than anticipated.

Calls came in about people who had gotten into the sort of trouble they get into every day of the year, millennium or not.

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Shortly after 9:30 p.m., a Simi Valley man got an electric shock from a TV set. About the same time, paramedics were heading to aid a Thousand Oaks resident who had downed eight shots of vodka and probably wouldn’t be up for a midnight toast.

In Newbury Park, a resident burned some popcorn; when the smoke wouldn’t clear, the chef called 911, fearing a potential fire. A midnight bather hit her head in the tub, but survived.

As the night wore on, tired emergency center staffers donned party hats. Sitting at tables littered with scraps of a prime rib dinner and half-eaten chicken wings, they reminisced.

“I’m about to reach a milestone,” Sgt. Chuck Buttell, who has spent 27 years with the Sheriff’s Department, told his colleagues. “I wanted to be a cop in the year 2000.”

Just before midnight, corks flew as glasses of sparkling apple cider were passed around. From midnight to 12:15 a.m., the 911 lines lighted up for the first time all night. Neighbors countywide called to complain of midnight gunshots and to demand that loud parties be shut down. Ojai residents were alarmed by fireworks, thinking of those that sparked last month’s massive brush fire. But none of the incidents turned dangerous or violent, officials said.

It was the same placid story out on the streets.

In Oxnard, the Police Department deployed more than 100 officers--the most ever on duty at one time in the city’s history.

But at 10 minutes before the magic midnight hour, the only call blaring across Sgt. Tom Chronister’s patrol car radio was a request to tow an illegally parked car.

“Geez, if that doesn’t say it all,” said Chronister, turning down a deserted street in La Colonia. “You could shoot a cannon up and down these streets it’s so empty.”

Chronister’s car was packed with plastic cuffs--in case of mass arrests--extra ammunition, two cell phones, spike strips for pursuits, extra pepper spray, a shot gun and a rifle.

In Simi Valley--for years one of America’s safest cities--police reported no arrests just after midnight.

“We haven’t even wrecked anyone’s celebration,” Chief Randy Adams said.

In every community, parties ran the spectrum from chips and dip to pate de foie gras and fine French champagne, from romantic dinners for two to at least one millennial wedding.

In Santa Paula, Patrick Caraulia and Daphne Orpilla were wed Hawaiian-style at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

In the sanctuary, the air was thick with the scent of fresh flowers flown in from the islands. As midnight neared, seven bridesmaids in colorful Hawaiian dresses called kikepas were escorted down the aisle by seven groomsmen wearing elaborate leis.

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Natives of Hawaii, the couple met in Oxnard. She was a nurse in training and he was a firefighter rushing an accident victim to the hospital. Eight years later, they began planning their “millennium marriage.”

“We wanted to celebrate . . . in a special way,” Caraulia said. “Hopefully, we’ll be the first ones to have a Hawaiian wedding in California.”

Nobody got married at Ventura’s Millennium Masquerade, but the party at Seaside Park drew revelers decked out in everything from bridal gowns to Cat-in-the-Hat costumes.

Keith Johnson, 28, celebrating with his fiancee Angela Caezza, 22, said he felt as if he were making history.

“Our kids are going to ask us what we did,” he said. “And we’ll be able to say we saw the turn of the century and the turn of the millennium at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. And we were ecstatic.”

At midnight, the crowd watched as fireworks filled the sky over the Santa Barbara Channel.

Guests at the nearby Holiday Inn crowded their balconies to view the spectacle. In the background, they could hear a band called the Drivematics giving a musical nod to visions of millennial apocalypse. The group was belting out Stevie Wonder’s “Superstitious.”

In Simi Valley, Kathleen and Sean Ahern took their party cues from as sober a source as Consumer Reports, which rated champagnes in its November issue.

The couple bought the magazine’s top champagnes, invited 20 family members and friends over, handed them noisemakers, party hats and scorecards and set them to work.

The consensus, by a nose: Piper-Heidsieck, a French champagne praised by the Aherns’ guests for its crispness and smooth taste.

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In Santa Paula, 40 friends and relatives ate tamales and hoisted glasses of champagne on the patio between the Ramirez and Mendoza homes.

Mothers and grandmothers sat in a circle around a wood fire, hugging their younger kids. The men stood behind sipping, talking, listening to salsa. Children scampered in and out and all about, spraying string confetti from cans.

Jesus Ramirez, 16, a Santa Paula High School student, said they did the same thing last year.

“Me and my dad, we stayed up all night just talking about stuff, and making jokes,” he said.

At Oxnard’s swank Tower Club, the festive trappings were more elaborate.

A robot set the tone for the evening in the club atop the county’s tallest building, promising guests “a once-in-a-lifetime encounter that only the privileged few will ever have.”

They paid $250 each for the experience, including a six-course French meal of goose pate, lobster in champagne sauce and beef filets accompanied by white-tipped asparagus. The salad was equally elegant, colored with bright yellow and purple pansies.

Former Oxnard City Councilman Andres Herrera and his wife, Priscilla, sipped Moet & Chandon champagne between courses. He said he chose the Tower Club because he knew it would make for a special evening.

“We wanted to make sure we were at the top of the world,” Herrera said.

Others there felt the same.

Eunice and Mike Viola considered nesting in the safety of their Rincon home, but decided to give their five daughters, ranging from 8 to 20, a more lasting memory. Dressed in fancy satin dresses, they took turns dancing with their father, a contractor.

Thirteen-year-old Chanel declared the party the best she could remember.

“It’s the fanciest besides, like, debutante balls,” she said.

For some residents, the millennium was a time for reflection.

At Ventura’s Church of Religious Science, celebrants prayed through “the universal, vibrational language of the drumbeat” for 24 hours. At the Ojai Foundation’s spiritual retreat in Upper Ojai, visitors engaged in three days of meditation, including a “water ceremony” to heal the foundation’s fire-blackened nature preserve.

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At St. Paschal Baylon Church in Thousand Oaks, 200 worshipers bowed their heads in prayer as midnight tolled. Msgr. Joseph George asked them to seek reconciliation “with your spouse, the person sitting behind you or with the person you just don’t understand.”

“Years from now, someone will ask you where you were at the turn of the century,” George said. “Tell them you were here, making thanksgiving. Remember that a great change was made in your life. You became a disciple of peace.”

On Santa Cruz Island, Eric Fisher, 21, and six buddies experienced tranquillity, if not peace.

Hunkering down in his parka, Fisher scanned the skies for shooting stars and the mainland for signs of Y2K insanity.

Camping permits sold out by Dec. 29, according to the National Park Service. About 60 people waited out millennium madness on the computer-free island.

“Just deer mice, no Y2K bugs,” Fisher said, warming himself before a campfire as he spoke into his cell phone.

“We don’t know if there’s been a riot because we don’t have a radio or TV. We’re just enjoying the quiet.”

Contributors to this story include Times staff writers Tina Dirmann, Anna Gorman, Daryl Kelley, Kay Saillant and Margaret Talev; and Times Community News staff members Stacy Brown, Gail Davis, Josh Goldstein, Grace E. Jang, Josh Karp, Tony Lystra, Maija-Lisa Nagarajan, Milo Peinemann and Sarah Van Cott.