Some Living Below Dam Moving Out

Corona residents wearily returned to their homes downstream from Prado Dam on Monday, three days after being urged to evacuate when the mammoth earthen structure began seeping.

Despite assurances from federal officials that the dam is secure and was never in danger of bursting, some of the returning homeowners said they were going to move because of the scare.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t feel safe being here,” said Sendi Diaz, 36, who lives at the Green River Village Mobile Home Park with her five children, ages 6 to 20. “I just don’t want to take that chance.”

Diaz and her family were among more than 2,000 people from Corona and an Orange County recreational vehicle park who were evacuated early Friday after the seepage was found in the 64-year-old dam on the Santa Ana River, which had been holding back a near-record level of water after the recent rainstorms.

Although residents were allowed back into their homes Friday afternoon, Corona city and law enforcement officials urged them to stay away until Monday, when the dam operators could release enough from the spillway to drop the water level behind the structure by 20 feet.

Officials with the Army Corps of Engineers on Monday reiterated what the agency said last week when the problem was discovered: Prado Dam was safe and in no danger of giving way. An agency spokesman said the area around the seepage had been stabilized, and that the water level had dropped to 45 feet, much closer to normal, and would continue to drop through the week.

“It’s A-OK,” said Fred-Otto Egeler, spokesman for the Los Angeles district of the corps, which operates and is upgrading the dam.

Corona city leaders, who faulted the corps for not notifying them of the leak for several hours, said they hoped to sit down with federal officials this week.

“It has been a problem over the years, communicating with the Army Corps,” said Councilman Steve Nolan, who owns a restaurant near the dam. “We should have been afforded the opportunity to determine whether there’s a threat or not to our city. We felt we were denied that.... Now’s the time to go back and objectively look at the entire situation and make whatever changes need to be made.”

Prado Dam, visible from the Riverside Freeway, is two miles from where Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino counties meet. The 1976 bicentennial sign painted on the dam’s spillway is a landmark to passing motorists.

Much of the Green River Golf Club, downstream from the dam, remained under water Monday.

Residents who took city officials’ advice and stayed elsewhere for the weekend began going home Sunday night and Monday.

Over the weekend, “it was like a ghost town,” said James Zimmer, 49.

Zimmer chose to stay in the park over the weekend with his dog, but he sent his 14-year-old son and his son’s mother to her mother’s house in Yorba Linda, and seven cats to a nearby animal shelter. He said he stayed because he believed that if there had been true danger, the government would have stopped freight trains carrying cargo along tracks that run near the mobile home park.

“The government cares more about the freight than people’s lives,” he said. “If we had to run, we would have run. [Still,] I was kind of happy they left, just in case something happened.”

As residents returned, a sign at the entrance greeted them with an announcement of a community meeting Thursday night to discuss the dam.

But for some it was too late.

“I’m getting out,” said Harold Hulsen, 53, who lives with his daughter and 3-year-old grandson in a blue mobile home with white trim. “I’ve got a real estate agent coming tomorrow.”

Hulsen’s daughter and grandson went to stay with another daughter in La Sierra, but he initially decided to stay put Friday evening. After a sleepless night, he decided to stay with friends in La Mirada.

“By Saturday, I said, ‘This is too nerve-racking, I’m going to leave,’ ” he said.

As Diaz sat smoking on the front porch of her mobile home, she said she never realized the dam could be a threat. She too said she plans on moving -- “anywhere but here.”