If Not By Land, Then By Sea

The boats shuttling Wednesday between Santa Barbara and Ventura carried stranded commuters, medical supplies and food -- and tears.

A hastily organized ocean ferry service transported nearly 1,500 travelers around a 30-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 101 that has been closed by mud and landslides since Monday.

Two excursion-boat operators jettisoned whale-watching and island-sightseeing schedules to launch the water-taxi service. They said they planned to continue offering the rides for $35 one way until Friday, when Caltrans officials expect to reopen the heavily used freeway.

Jet-powered catamarans from Ventura’s Island Packers Co. and Santa Barbara’s Sea Landing were jammed for each of the five round trips. Scores of travelers anxious to take the ocean detour around slide-devastated La Conchita were turned away for lack of space.

At the front of the Ventura-bound Condor Express, passenger Silvia Gutierrez cried as the boat passed close enough to La Conchita to see some homes standing beneath the huge mountainside gash that now marks the path of this week’s mudslide.

Through her tears, Gutierrez said that a 1995 La Conchita landslide forced her to run for her life as it smashed into her home and buried it. Monday’s avalanche killed a former boyfriend, Tony Alvis, she said. And her son, Ventura County Firefighter Izzy Gutierrez, was among those who dug Alvis’ body out of the mud.

As a member of the Fire Department’s search and rescue team, Izzy Gutierrez identified the body as that of the man he affectionately called his stepdad. On Wednesday, Gutierrez was on bereavement leave.

“I’m going to Ventura to be with my son and with Tony’s family,” said Silvia Gutierrez, an elementary school health technician who lives in Santa Barbara. “It’s all so sad. I’ve been trying since Monday to get to Ventura. Today, I couldn’t take it anymore. I have to get down there.”

The landslide’s huge scar drew the attention of Santa Barbara-bound ferry passengers, too.

Thirteen-year-old Steven Foster lives in La Conchita. He and his mother fled after Monday’s disaster and spent two nights at a friend’s house in Oxnard. He was taking the water taxi so he could go back to school.

“I was at the beach when it happened. The dirt came two streets from our house. We got all the stuff we could and left. We wanted to be as safe as possible,” said Steven, an eighth-grade honors student. “Right now, I just want to get back so I can go to school.”

Rincon resident Kurt Warner was happy to be headed home after being stranded for two days in Ventura with sons Alexander, 11, and Maximillian, 9. The three had returned Monday from a New Year’s holiday trip to the Cayman Islands.

“We can see La Conchita out our kitchen window,” said Warner, who is president of a telecommunications company. “What happened there is very sad. But I don’t think there’s anybody here who was surprised.”

Santa Barbara architect Henry Lenny and designer Renee Nichols were hoping the ocean taxi would get them to town in time for meetings with clients from Europe and New Mexico. The clients were waiting in Santa Barbara, Lenny said.

After driving to a business meeting in San Clemente, “we tried twice to get a plane, but they were all booked. So we spent one night in Los Angeles and another in Ventura. Today, we were going to detour through Bakersfield, but then we heard about the boat,” he said.

Bakery company executive Charles Kavanaugh of Ventura also was preparing to make the 145-mile detour through the San Joaquin Valley and the Santa Maria area to deliver gourmet bread to Santa Barbara hotels and restaurants when he learned of the makeshift ocean ferry.

He loaded 250 loaves of sourdoughs, wheats and ryes into nine 40-pound bags and lugged them aboard a northbound boat.

“We couldn’t deliver yesterday’s bread. So we took it over to the emergency shelter at the fairgrounds” and gave it to La Conchita evacuees, Kavanaugh said.

Badly needed Santa Barbara-bound cargo such as medical supplies, sump pumps and computer hard drives were being carried for free on both 65-foot vessels.

On a Ventura-bound ferry, passenger Dawn Carrier watched as it maneuvered through floating storm debris outside the Santa Barbara Harbor. Carrier, a nurse at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, was anxious to get to Oxnard and her two children. She had not seen the 9- and 16-year-olds since leaving for work Sunday.

“Monday night, I worked an extra shift and stayed at a co-worker’s house. I went out and bought an outfit and pajamas so I’d have something to wear. Then Tuesday, the company put me up at a hotel. My co-workers paid for my boat fare. Friends of mine at Park Avenue Church of Christ are taking care of my kids,” said Carrier, who may have to take the ferry back to Santa Barbara on Friday to work her next hospital shift.

“It’s been very difficult. But when you look at people losing their lives and their homes, if this is the worst that happens to me, I’m coming out good.”