Home Devastated by Flood—Sword of Damacles Has Fallen

We are Bonnie & Pete, and the Winter Solstice, 21 December 2023, was the longest night of the year, ESPECIALLY here in our Port Hueneme neighborhood.

It had started to rain when Pete and I went to bed. Then at 1:30am the Emergency Alert signal on our mobile phones blasted us awake with a tornado warning. When we leapt out of bed, it was into a few inches of water!! The room was already flooded with a few inches of water. It eventually the level rose to 6" of water throughout the house, rushing in all of the doors.

The front door and sliders from the enclosed patio lanai could not keep the water out. Water from the lanai came over the sandbags we had in place like a waterfall. There was nothing we could do but scramble. We both went outside in the rain to check our drains which were now flowing backward, bringing water IN. Running back inside, everything that touched the floor was in water, so we grabbed what we could to put onto 'higher ground', saving a few precious items.

All the furniture was in water--multible antique Japanese tansus, sideboard, club chairs, sofa, recliner that no longer reclines; all the books on low bookshelves, or beside the office desk were in water; art in portfolios or stacked around waiting to be hung was in water. All the closets, vanities, cabinets were soaked from sitting in water then the wicking of moisture upward.

A storm cell dumped a monumental amount rain, 5" in only afew hours, more than usually falls in all of December. It overwhelmed the city's drainage channel nearby that then produced massive flooding into our cluster of about 60 homes. Some residents had to be evacuated by emergency crew that night.

The nature of this neighborhood created a funnel effect for the water from the blocked drains to inundate us. The water on walkway outside the front door between the buildings was up to our knees, moving and carrying rubbish bins and detritus along with.

The nearby street, edged with a cinderblock wall enclosing our complex, became a river, rising to 5 FEET, inundating out cars parked there. Both were covered to the top of the windshields at the water's peak and were total losses. Thankfully GEICO auto handled this immediately and fairly.

While the 6" of water that soaked our house drained after 12 hours, the insidious nature of water has left the majority of our possessions ruined—papers, books, objects, art, ephemera, shoes, and clothes, the records of our lives. How can I replace my first Berkeley Museum exhibition catalogues with inscriptions from dear ones no longer walking this earth.

Now is the aftermath, the whirl of calls, claims, and chaos. As anyone who has suffered in a disaster, both the losses and the aftershocks are numbing to the mind, body, and soul.

EVERYthing has to be moved out, either to our temporary lodgings or into storage. This is most of what is in our house that wasn't ruined. It includes ALL of Pete's tools, and as a livelong mechanic, there are many, many, many tools; most will be fine once de-rusted. I, as a lifelong collector, am not as lucky. I'll have to determine what is safe, what is salvagable, what is ruined beyond repair. As a curator, the objects and ephemera, art and books, are precious to me.

I was stunned to learned that my renter's insurance does not cover this destruction. Nor does the owner's homeowner insurance. Indeed, all renters and owners claims to their insurance companies have been denied because to be covered, as in an earthquake, FLOODS are only covered by special and specific FLOOD policies.

Pete and I are shell shocked, scrambling to salvage what we can and clear out the rest. We are temporarily moving while our home is gutted, dried, and renovated, all out of the owner's pocket (again, policy didn't include FLOOD insurance). Ventura County and the cities impacted (Port Hueneme, Oxnard, Ventura) are applying to Cal and FEMA for assistance but that is a long and uncertain process.

We must sift through everything, and what is not going into the dumpster must be repaired, cleaned, replaced, if we can even find replacements, boxed, moved with us or moved to rented storage, hiring movers, cleaners, and people to do what we and/or our friends can no longer do.

The cost of all this is huge, sudden, and out-of-pocket, a burden we are unable to bear alone.

* * 2023 was not the year we wanted but was the year we got * *