Creekside residents occupy bridge

Published: Jan. 27, 2023, 7:54 p.m.

Residents at Creekside Cabins occupied the temporary bridge between the RV park and Highway 101 last night, counter-blocking an excavator that was moving into position to prevent access to the property. Residents originally had between 8:00 am Wednesday and 5:00 last night to evacuate.\n\nNow, after last night\u2019s standoff, they\u2019ll be allowed another hour this morning to get off the property that\u2019s been declared a public health emergency after a sinkhole opened up in the driveway, blocking access.\n\nBy quarter after five last night, nine trailers had been hauled, most of them by a driver for United Disaster Relief of Northern California. Passenger cars and pickup trucks had been streaming over the bridge for hours, and at least one mobile home containing a family with six kids had inched onto the highway, belching smoke and smelling of bad brakes. \n\nAmid conflicting information and spotty cell phone and internet access, residents didn\u2019t fully understand the immediacy of the situation until very close to the deadline. At 5:13, with sunset approaching and a line of cars creeping toward the exit, a crewmember began to move the excavator onto the bridge.\n\nShaylene Harvey walked towards him with her dog, a four-year-old Australian shepherd named Lilly. We can\u2019t repeat most of what she had to say, but before she sat down on the bridge, she implored the crew to, \u201cJust let the last few people out.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us be homeless on this side of the bridge!\u201d she screamed, as Randy and Mitzi Feta began to cross in their car, fully loaded with personal belongings, houseplants, and two huskies. Their trailer, packed to capacity, was left behind as the huskies howled and Mitzi sobbed into her hands. \n\n\u201cI\u2019m trying to enforce the order,\u201d the crewmember said, after backing the excavator away from the bridge to the side of the road and disembarking.\n\nAnother resident wept as he described his situation. \u201cThey paid a quarter million to put this bridge in,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they could have put a permanent one in for way less than that\u2026I don\u2019t know why they did this, and now they gave us two days\u2026I have three children, a five-year-old, a twelve-year-old, and a seventeen-year-old, that I have to find a house for.\u201d\n\nEveryone on the premises was committing a misdemeanor, but no was cited, as a Highway Patrol Officer arrived on the scene and asked frantic residents to explain what was going on. \u201cWhy do you want to get your trailers out?\u201d he asked, amid the sound of heavy equipment backing up, people screaming, and the dogs voicing their displeasure. \u201cBecause we\u2019re all going to be homeless,\u201d Harvey exclaimed. \u201cDo you not know what\u2019s going on?\u201d He did not. Residents briefed him at the scene, as more highway patrol arrived, quickly reinforced by sheriff\u2019s deputies.\n\nShortly after 6:00 pm, a MedStar ambulance and Willits fire truck arrived, responding to a woman experiencing an oxygen-related medical emergency inside the park. We spoke with Randy Feta just as the sirens subsided and firefighters spilled out of the truck and ran across the road, over the bridge, and into the campground.\n\n\u201cThe thing is, they gave us some directions to get out of here, otherwise they\u2019re shutting the place down, that\u2019s fine and dandy,\u201d he said. \u201cWe followed the directions, we packed, we\u2019re ready to go, now we got no place to sleep. My car\u2019s packed, my trailer\u2019s packed, there\u2019s no room, no nothing. We're ready to go. Now they won\u2019t let us go\u2026I want to get out,\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cI packed all day. I got a bad back, a bad neck, I\u2019m disabled, I\u2019m elderly, and I packed hard to get ready to go. I\u2019m just following the directions. I did everything.\u201d The Fetas had packed so tightly that the bed in their trailer was inaccessible, so they slept in their car last night.\n\nOn the bridge, occupying residents moved out of the way to allow Manny, another resident we spoke with earlier this week, to cross over and get out. He told us yesterday he spent the whole day getting his trailer registered, but he wasn\u2019t hauling it with the pickup truck he\u2019d been working on. When we walked into the park in near-total darkness hours later, his trailer was still there, with the lights on.\n\nOne former resident was on scene with a one-ton truck, offering to haul people out for whatever they could pay. Aaron Rusty Deeson observed that, \u201cUnfortunately, most of the residents out here have not been able to afford to purchase or maintain a one-ton vehicle to haul these large trailers they live in with. About half the residents still have all of their belongings here. Most of the residents spent the last 24 or 48 hours getting everything ready. At the last minute, they were ready to go, but there were just not enough vehicles available to get them out of here in a timely manner. I mean, it\u2019s been chaos.\u201d\n\nThere is one road in the campground, heavily potholed and barely wide enough to be called a one-lane thoroughfare. At the back of the property, so far from the road it was imposs...