Bob Myers sat within the gymnasium of Oxnard Faculty on Thursday afternoon holding his cane.
At round 1:45 a.m. Thursday, he was woke up at his residence within the 55-plus group of Hueneme Bay by the sound of speeding water.
A storm that barreled down on Ventura County dumped what officers stated was historic ranges of rain over a brief time frame. The downpour left streets flooded throughout Oxnard, Ventura and Port Hueneme, the place Myers lives.
“I assumed some pipes had blown up or one thing,” he stated. Myers ran to his rest room however discovered no points. He then moved to his again door, the place he noticed water speeding into his residence “like somebody was standing there with a hearth hose.”
The doorways, he defined, had been closed, and the water was coming in from small areas round them. The doorways couldn’t be opened.
He appeared via one in every of his home windows on the advanced and noticed “a lake.”
“Finally,” he stated, “the water receded sufficient that individuals might start getting their doorways open.”
Tales like this emerged in Ventura County coastal communities hit laborious by the rainstorm.
Preliminary knowledge recommend Oxnard could have skilled one of many heaviest downpours ever noticed within the space, with rainfall charges of three inches per hour sustained for greater than an hour.
“These are genuinely extraordinary torrential downpours — and, importantly, they’re persevering with. This isn’t over but,” Daniel Swain, a local weather scientist with UCLA, stated at a briefing Thursday.
Fireplace officers in Ventura County reported that 911 dispatchers had acquired greater than 275 requires assist over a five-hour interval as floodwaters rose within the coastal communities of Port Hueneme and Oxnard.
Mud and particles tumbled into roadways in Santa Barbara, closing no less than one off-ramp on the 101 Freeway. Elsewhere, vehicles had been surrounded by speeding water that seemed to be a number of ft deep.
However Port Hueneme was significantly laborious hit.
Considered one of Myers’ neighbors by chance minimize himself whereas trying to get out of his residence and was hospitalized.
Though the waters had receded, the harm to Myers’ residence had been achieved.
“There’s nothing livable left in my residence,” he stated. From 3 to 4 ft of water had entered the home, throwing home equipment and furnishings round and soaking partitions.
Myers was at a loss about what his subsequent steps can be.
“I’m an unlucky one,” he stated. “I’ve no household on this state. I’ve no household nearer than the East Coast.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”