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Camarillo Springs Residents Return To Muddy Mess

CAMARILLO SPRINGS (CBSLA.com) — Some Camarillo Springs residents returned to their homes Saturday to clean up the mess left behind after a massive mud flow came down a hillside behind their homes on San Como Lane.

The mess KCAL9's Joy Benedict saw Saturday morning was overwhelming, with some of the neighbors watching as city crews scooped up and hauled away tons of mud.

Bill Golubics spent the morning hosing off his driveway.

"Didn't expect this much rain that quickly," said Golubics. "Just trying to get some cleanup here done, the back of the yard is all full of mud and the side of the house."

But his mess was nothing compared to a neighbor's home just a few feet away, where the front lawn was buried in heavy, wet mud. The debris did not go around the home — it went through it, pushing the living room furniture, and the neighbor, out of her home.

"It came in, it washed her out the front door, pushed her out," said another neighbor, Dorothy Rosenfeld.

The mud was so thick and heavy that it also trapped the homeowner's husband inside.

"We located the husband behind the front door, buried up to about the hips in mud," said Ventura County Fire Department Capt. Mike Lindberry.

Firefighters sawed through the front door to rescue the man, and evacuated 11 homes sitting at the base of a burned out mountain.

Golubics said neighbors knew the hillside was damaged during the Springs Fire in 2013.

"Where a fire burns real hot it glazes the soil, that soil loses its ability to absorb the moisture from the rain," Lindberry explained.

Despite all of the debris that came down the hill, it was not a mudslide, but a problem with a drainage ditch, authorities told Benedict. The ditch got so full of rocks and debris that the mud had nowhere to go except inside the homes.

A geologist determined that the hillside is safe and the evacuation order was lifted for all of the homes expect one. The home's owner came to look Saturday morning and, although he did not feel like speaking on camera, assured neighbors that he and his wife are OK, but their dog Tinkerbell cannot be found.

"Their little dog was engulfed in the mud," said Rosenfeld.

 

 

 

 

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