Ventura’s Recent History of Disaster, Loss, and Recovery
Southern California’s Resilience Embodied in a Community’s Efforts to Protect Life and Freedom
When I was seven years old, my world was very small and very contained within my hometown. I had lived in Ventura, California my entire life and to me, Santa Barbara and Thousand Oaks were on the opposite ends of the earth. But even then, disaster was not out of my world or my range of understanding. In 2005 Ventura county experienced a tragedy when the small beachside community of La Conchita took serious damage from a landslide. La Conchita was a peaceful town situated off the 101 freeway on the Pacific coast between Ventura and Santa Barbara. I had admired it countless times from the road as I took in its scenic beauty nestled between Rincon Mountain and the ocean. After near-record rainfalls (15 inches in 15 days), the loose dirt on the hillside collapsed and moved rapidly down towards the houses of La Conchita. 10 people passed in the disaster and dozens of houses were destroyed. In the wake of the disaster, Ventura and Santa Barbara were very quick to come together in support of the disaster victims. They contacted American Red Cross immediately and got them involved, and opened a memorial bank account for everyone who had passed in the landslide open to donations from anyone. I know it is not uncommon, but I believe that Ventura/Oxnard especially is a very generous community and is devoted to the equality of all people. Even the people who don’t have much seem happy to live there. For some reason I remember these events clearly and I remember asking my mom to take my sister and I to see La Conchita after the landslide. It sounds like morbid curiosity but I truly believe it was out of genuine concern. This leads me to the main disaster that has affected life in my hometown. If the best description for my feelings about La Conchita was concern, then my reaction to the Ventura county Thomas fire could only be described as heartbreak. Ventura is wildfire country, but even with the precedent of past wildfires, no one was ready for the tragedy of the Thomas Fire, the largest wildfire in Southern California’s history. The fire started in December of 2017 and raged across the county’s dry woodlands until January 12, 2018. It burned 440 square miles, inflicted 2.176 billion in damages, and over 100,000 people had to be evacuated. Hundreds of those evacuated were family members and close friends. I remember the fear in my cousin’s voice as she spoke to me on the phone, driving down the mountain during the evacuation, unsure if she would ever see her childhood home again. For my friend’s family, their worst fears were confirmed when they returned to nothing but a pile of burnt wood and broken glass after the fire. It was an incredibly hard time for my family and everyone in the county, but despite the horrible destructive force of this disaster, the community reaction to it reaffirmed all my beliefs about my county’s spirit. In the wake of the fires, the community truly came together with relief efforts and donations. The organization Ventura Strong was formed promptly to unite Ventura citizens in the movement to help the victims. Ventura Strong put on the Thomas Fire Relief Benefit which was a concert/entertainment event featuring several famous Ventura county natives such as SuperDuperKyle and Colbie Caillat. The benefit not only generated thousands of dollars for the fire victims but it helped raise awareness and visibility of the relief effort and resulted in several 5 figure donations. The people truly came together for the betterment of community and assurance of quality of life for everyone.
The interesting thing about this course, at the beginning, was the critical glance cast on organizations involved in the relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina. Much of our course material pointed to Red Cross and Salvation Army as ineffective, corrupt, and unhelpful in times of disaster. This came as a huge shock to me since, not long before that I had witnessed those very same organizations play an instrumental role in keeping my hometown together in a time of great crisis. I was completely unaware of their dark sides. Although it changed my opinion on the organizations as a whole, I truly believe everyone in the fire fighting was dedicated to the protection of Ventura citizens over anything else. Firefighters died in the smoke, volunteers stayed up for days taking care of evacuees in the shelters. I have always been proud to be from VTown but when I saw the work of the people coming together to help out as much as they could from their own pockets, I knew I would be rocking Ventura strong forever. No matter where life takes me and my family, after surviving such a tragic and long-fought battle, we will work to protect those around us no matter what disaster may strike.
