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 house within the 55-plus neighborhood of Hueneme Bay by the sound of dashing water.
A storm that barreled down on Ventura County dumped what officers mentioned was historic ranges of rain over a brief time period. The downpour left streets flooded throughout Oxnard, Ventura and Port Hueneme, the place Myers lives.
“I believed some pipes had blown up or one thing,” he mentioned. Myers ran to his toilet however discovered no points. He then moved to his again door, the place he noticed water dashing into his house “like somebody was standing there with a firehose.”
The doorways, he defined, have been closed, and the water was coming in from small areas round them. The doorways couldn’t be opened.
He seemed by way of one in all his home windows on the complicated and noticed “a lake.”
“Ultimately,” he mentioned, “the water receded sufficient that folks may start getting their doorways open.”
Tales like this emerged in Ventura County coastal communities hit onerous by the rainstorm.
Preliminary information counsel Oxnard might 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,” mentioned Daniel Swain, a local weather scientist with UCLA, at a briefing Thursday.
Hearth 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 not less than one off-ramp on the 101 Freeway. Elsewhere, automobiles have been surrounded by dashing water that seemed to be a number of ft deep.
However Port Hueneme was significantly onerous hit.
One among Myers’ neighbors unintentionally minimize himself whereas trying to get out of his house and was hospitalized.
Though the waters had receded, the injury to Myers’ house had been finished.
“There’s nothing livable left in my house,” he mentioned. From three 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 mentioned. “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.”
