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A River’s Toll in Rubidoux

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Times Staff Writer

A day after Jim and Kay Mason’s friends unscrewed the brass knocker from their front door, a Riverside County building inspector stapled a warning to the same spot: “Unsafe.”

“There was hope here, but Mother Nature is bigger than all of us,” said the inspector, Derick London.

The raging, rain-swollen Santa Ana River eroded about an acre of the Masons’ 10-acre property in Rubidoux this week, largely destroying the 2,100-square-foot, three-bedroom home Jim Mason built 38 years ago.

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“It was a heartbreaker, walking off my front porch for the last time,” he said Tuesday. “That was my whole life.”

As the rain continued late Monday night, the sand under the home was so severely eroded that the garage collapsed partly into the water. On Tuesday, the rest of the home remained barely upright. The roof was cracked in half, and one bedroom had washed away. Other parts of the home hung perilously over the gouged-out embankment.

County workers said the sixth consecutive day of rain probably sealed the home’s fate.

“From what I see now, with the water flowing away from the home, I think you could optimistically say that with one full 24-hour day less of rain, that house would still be there,” said Riverside County Fire Capt. Mark Oakley.

The Masons left their property Monday evening. Jim Mason said he couldn’t bear watching it crumble away.

“All of my barns are in Norco -- or the ocean -- by now,” said Jim Mason, who couldn’t buy flood insurance because the property is in a flood plain. “I love this house. I’m in shock. I raised my kids here. I had 38 good years here, and I appreciated them.”

Mason said he wouldn’t rebuild there.

The Mason family first arrived on the land during World War II, when Jim Mason’s mother took in about 100 children left orphaned during the war and allowed them to frolic in the rural area along with the chickens, goats and cows. Jim and Kay Mason would later sell walnuts grown from trees on their land.

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The detritus of their two children’s and four grandchildren’s formative years were still visible on the property.

A granddaughter’s tire swing is suspended from a frontyard oak tree. A plastic playground sits next to the swing. An old metal tractor sits in a grassy field, across from bales of hay.

Along with the property’s other contents, the goats, chickens, dogs and cats were moved Sunday and Monday.

“I’m wondering what we’re going to do,” Kay Mason said Monday. “We have 40 years of our stuff in that home and nowhere to put it.”

The Masons’ son, Cliff, gathered friends to load up three rental trucks of belongings.

Just inside the house was the kitchen doorjamb, with telltale hash marks on the wood -- recording the changing heights of Mason clan members as they grew up. Right below the lines for “Pa” and “Grammy” were lines for “Alexa,” “Jacob” and “Halle.”

The Masons will live with their son in Riverside until they figure what to do next.

“I’ll leave it in God’s hands,” Jim Mason said.

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