Home Depot Store Site

* A Home Depot would bring more than terrible traffic and noise if Ventura allows one to be built at the old 101 drive-in. I was watching the news a few nights ago and saw a large hardware store on fire with huge clouds of black smoke billowing up into the air. I immediately thought that this could happen at this proposed Home Depot, full of toxic materials such as paints, thinners, solvents, thousands of pieces of lumber, plastic, pipe, plastic furniture and more.

With the strong prevailing winds we have in this area of Ventura every afternoon, a fire at a Home Depot there would carry toxic smoke all over the surrounding neighborhoods. The traffic gridlocks at Telephone Road and Main Street would keep emergency vehicles from responding in a timely manner. With cars and people evacuating, it would be a catastrophe.

Home Depot’s representative recently was quoted as saying that the new Home Depot site in Camarillo, on the south side of the Ventura Freeway, is where it would “not impact any existing residential neighborhoods.” Home Depot should realize that the 101 drive-in(residential) site in Ventura is the wrong location. The thousands of children and residents surrounding this location should not jeopardized and thought of as “chopped liver.”

Ventura deserves the same consideration as Camarillo. If Home Depot wants to be a good neighbor in Ventura as they claim to be, they should find a site on the south side of the freeway or another less dangerous location.

LEO McCRORY

Ventura