In La Conchita, Gawking Never Stops

LA CONCHITA —  Six months after the earth moved and landed on top of several residences, the little seaside community is still a major tourist attraction for the disaster-appreciative.

Although the rubbernecking has slowed, dozens of cars still exit the Ventura Freeway every day between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to check out the sites: several partly buried and furniture-strewn houses along Vista Del Rincon Drive, and natives walking about carrying surfboards.

They drive up to the chain-link fence, stare in bewilderment, pose for photos or family video docudramas and back their cars down the road to re-enter the freeway.

The carved-out hillside of La Conchita has become a sort of Carrow’s Restaurant of natural disasters: It’s quick, easy and always open.

The gawking never stops.

Dick and Jean Nathanson of Cerritos brought an Isuzu Trooper full of friends from Panama to check out the architectural carnage on their way to Santa Barbara for lunch.

“We’re showing them the tragedy of the area along with the beauty,” Dick Nathanson said. “You sure pay a price for living on a hillside.”

It’s a voyeur’s paradise. The houses are split open much like Malibu Barbie’s beach house, with personal belongings roasting in the sun for all to see.

Ugh, say most La Conchitans, as if the mudslide was not enough.

“I think these tourists have, like, no lives, so they have to look at other people’s,” said Aubrey Falk, 12. She and her friends were spending the afternoon eating hamburgers and reading books near the middle of a quiet street with their mutts--Oscar and Kyrus--asleep beside them.

“I mean, it happened awhile ago. Like, why?”

They miss the way La Conchita used to be. The formerly anonymous La Conchita where an occasional motorist would stop to buy bananas at the Seaside Banana Grove or a tank of gas.

“Nobody used to bother us,” said Brie Braselton, 15, who lost her home to the icky avalanche of mud. “It was wonderful.”

If solitude is the definition of wonderful, then La Conchita is paradise lost.

Formerly mellow, beach-loving residents now put rocks and branches in the street and hang nasty signs warning looky-loos to find another disaster to suit their curiosity.

“Keep Out, That Means You,” reads one.

Bob Hurst wonders if he misspelled the sign, because nobody pays any attention to it.

“I wish they’d keep the hell out of here and leave me alone,” said Hurst, whose home of 40 years literally nudges up against the mobile-when-wet earth. “They got no business driving up here to pose in front of that damn mountain. They even pick my tomatoes.”

Jeremiah Turrentine, 14, said the tourists don’t come around like they used to, but still manage to get in the way of his roller-blading.

“The cars used to drive by every five minutes, but now it’s like every hour,” Jeremiah said. “It’s worse on the weekends.”

His grandfather, Ed Barnhill, does not understand where they come from.

“You’d think everyone in California would have seen it by now,” Barnhill said.

Charlotte Van Lown of Santa Clarita had seen it, but once wasn’t enough.

She wanted a better look.

“The first time I drove by I was towing a horse trailer and couldn’t really take my eyes off the road,” said Van Lown, who was on her way to Santa Barbara with her husband, Bill.

Van Lown said it was just like seeing the earthquake damage in Northridge--a favorite place to take visiting friends.

“Sure is impressive,” she said.

Minutes later, Michael Panawa of Palm Desert pulled up with his family.

First came the initial shock frequently seen on the faces of disaster-viewing tourists.

“Holy cow, I’ve never seen a house look like . . . like that,” Panawa said, nodding his head, eyes focused on a sofa hanging from the second floor of one residence.

Then there was the reaction to being told about the houses he couldn’t see.

“Oh. You mean totally buried? Wow. That’s terrible.”

Then comes the fumbling for words to describe the awesome power of nature.

“How you can have so much and lose it in an instant? It’s mind-boggling how quickly life can change . . . how quickly Mother Nature reclaims her land.”

Then he, too, left for Santa Barbara.