Storm Damage in County Tops $50 Million

VENTURA —  With blue skies forecast for days to come, Ventura County began Tuesday to dry out and clean up from Monday’s emphatic climax to a month of storms--sweeping water from dozens of flooded homes, scraping mud from about 35 closed roadways and pushing countywide damage estimates beyond $50 million.

By himself, one Fillmore rancher estimated at least $1 million in losses as the raging Santa Clara River changed course to claim 45 acres of orange trees and vegetables and destroyed several pieces of farm equipment.

“It just kept rising, and there was nothing we could do about it,” said Chap Morris Jr., part owner of the ranch and the William L. Morris auto dealership. “I’m selling a car right now to pay for the damage.”

The 101 Freeway north of Ventura reopened, but not before travelers backed up for hours waiting to snake through new piles of mud to Santa Barbara.

And throughout the county, frustration was etched on the faces of displaced residents and stonewalled commuters.

About 60 residents of a Ventura apartment house, pancaked by a falling hillside, hunkered down in emergency housing and tried to figure out what to do next.

“Furniture, clothes, shoes, televisions, my VCR--we lost everything,” said Ramiro Ortega, whose Cedar Street apartment was flattened with a thunderous roar Monday night.

In east Ojai, owners of 25 houses swamped twice by flood waters in three weeks shoveled silt from driveways and living rooms and wondered whether it is time to find a better place to live.

“The whole creek has just blown over the yard,” said Dan Misiaszek, 38, who figured he lost $10,000 in possessions during the first flood and $5,000 this time.

The Union Pacific Railroad trestle over the Ventura River--undermined by raging storm waters Monday--will not be reopened for weeks, halting 18 commuter and two to four freight trains a day.

“We got zapped by El Nino,” said railroad spokesman Mike Furtney.

But another washed-out Union Pacific line near Camarillo should be stable by this morning, he said, allowing for resumption of Metrolink trains from Oxnard and Camarillo. A Metrolink spokesman, however, said that commuter service would remain halted indefinitely.

Near Mugu Rock, repair crews reopened Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu late Tuesday.

And in Thousand Oaks, the worst storm damage came from an 8-foot-deep sinkhole in Hillcrest Boulevard near Moorpark Road.

Some 23,000 schoolchildren stayed home in Ventura and Port Hueneme when district administrators decided not to force far-flung employees to maneuver a maze of road closures to get to their jobs.

That was not an easy task on Tuesday--a day that began with 35 closed roadways and entire communities cut off from the rest of the county because of mudslides.

The Upper Ojai was first to reconnect, when the road to Santa Paula was reopened. But by day’s end, residents of Matilija Canyon and 18 residents at the Lake Piru Recreation Area were still isolated. A pregnant woman and a man with chronic diabetes were airlifted from the lake area for safety.

Nonetheless, county officials were counting themselves lucky again. A huge storm had threatened disaster, but disaster had been averted.

“We’ve suffered a lot of damage to public facilities, but considering the amount of rainfall, we’ve been very fortunate,” county Public Works Director Art Goulet said after briefing the Board of Supervisors.

Driving rains and saturated hills caused significant new crop and property damage. But there was no loss of life and there were very few injuries, emergency officials said.

“We truly dodged a bullet on this one,” Sheriff Larry Carpenter said.

Although authorities said it was too early to give precise damage estimates, Laura Hernandez, manager of the county Office of Emergency Services, said the total surely exceeds $50 million.

“That number will definitely increase,” she said. And total losses from the series of fierce storms that have raked the county since January will exceed those of the floods of January 1995.

The official county estimate before this storm was $38 million, counting only $500,000 in Caltrans costs, she said. But Caltrans officials said Tuesday that $13 million in contracts have been let to private companies for road repairs in Ventura County.

In addition, Goulet said, the county’s road, flood-control and other public works facilities experienced “many millions” in damage from the latest storm that poured up to 9 inches of rain in the mountains behind Ojai on Monday.

County Agricultural Commissioner W. Earl McPhail said county farmers, whose crop losses totaled $19 million previously, had suffered “significant” new damage in the millions of dollars. Now, crops on 10,000 to 12,000 acres of the Oxnard Plain have been damaged or destroyed, and vegetable farmers may lose an entire planting cycle, he said.

“Planting time for celery was a month ago,” McPhail said.

And this time, the citrus ranchers of the fertile inland valleys--Santa Clara and Ojai--suffered severe losses as well.

The Morris ranch may have been hurt most--with 25 acres of citrus and 20 acres of valuable watercress submerged in water up to 8 feet deep--but authorities said that the farm at a precarious crook of Sespe Creek was not alone.

The Santa Clara River was raging at 135,000 cubic feet per second Monday night--the greatest flow since 1969 on Southern California’s last wild river.

“At that rate I’m sure there’s significant damage throughout the Santa Clara Valley for anybody who is along that river,” said Rex Laird, county Farm Bureau executive director.

Fillmore resident Joyce Basolo, who has lived in the same house near the Santa Clara River for 42 years, said she knew something was up when she looked out her kitchen window about 7 a.m. Tuesday.

“I saw a duck floating by my house and a bunch of fruit in the water, and I said, ‘Boy something’s wrong here,’ ” she said. Her house is usually surrounded by an orchard, she said.

Still, Basolo said her day had a happy ending that harkened back to the neighborliness of decades past.

To protect her house from damage, one neighbor drove his skip-loader over and built a sand berm around it, she said.

And to empty her flooded basement, another neighbor brought over a pump.

“In a small town like this, friends chip in for everything,” she said. “My friends were here before 911.”

Times staff writers Miguel Bustillo and Tracy Wilson and correspondent Richard Warchol contributed to this story.