Camarillo Mops Up in Wake of Aerial Assault

Equipped with rags, high-powered spray nozzles and painter’s ladders, Camarillo residents lost little time Thursday in wiping away the sticky residue left by aerial malathion spraying.

Volunteers converged on schools within the spray zone at sunrise, joining custodians in scouring jungle gyms, picnic tables and water fountains with antibacterial soap.

“Children are children,” said John Miller, a PTA member who pitched in with the cleanup at Dos Caminos School after working a night shift at Procter & Gamble in Oxnard. “They’re going to put their fingers in their mouths.”

Elsewhere, city employees hosed down parks, homeowners pulled tarps off their cars and patios, and carwash employees did a brisk early morning business.

A few residents within the 16-square-mile spray zone voiced concern about possible long-term health effects of malathion. Others complained about the hassles of mopping up.

Many, however, declared the whole episode a hype, saying they found little evidence of the malathion-bait mixture.

“I went running at 5 o’clock this morning and I didn’t notice anything,” said Gretchen Light, a Mission Oaks resident who was out for a midmorning walk with her 4-month-old daughter and two golden retrievers.

“I suppose I’m relieved that there weren’t huge blobs of goo all over and that I’m not fighting to breathe.”

Teresa Pellerino, a cafeteria manager at tiny Somis School, said the spraying was a source of entertainment for her two children--Sarah, 9, and Wesley, 7--who watched the copters pass overhead.

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Like Light, Pellerino thought the spraying anticlimactic.

“It wasn’t bad at all,” she said. “I expected to find everything all sticky and messy. But you could hardly tell.”

At Los Nogales School on the western edge of the spray zone, parents and custodians donned thick gloves and carefully removed plastic bags that had been wrapped around each doorknob and over sandboxes.

“As a parent of a child who goes here, I knew that I would feel better with the playground equipment cleaned off,” said Caprice Kelton, who was washing down a steel jungle gym in preparation for students’ arrival at 8 a.m.

Los Nogales and other schools within the spray zone planned to keep students off the grass and some blacktop surfaces, even after a thorough watering.

“It’s always good to take precautions. Ten years down the road, we might learn something we don’t know today,” said Sam Love, assistant principal of Las Colinas School in Mission Oaks.

“We just want to make sure the kids are safe. That’s the important thing.”

Similar cleanup operations took place at 10 parks within the spray zone.

In Adolfo Park, workers for the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District wiped down the tot lot with a mixture of water and chemical neutralizer.

“There was no way we could cover everything, so we’re going to spray everything,” said Dan O’Connell, a park district worker.

And in Leisure Village, retirees affixed spray nozzles to garden hoses to blast the yellow drops off their skylights and awnings. At a community meeting Monday, state officials had warned residents to clean the opaque sky boxes before the malathion mixture could bake in the sun.

Standing on the top step of his ladder in shorts and shirt sleeves, 75-year-old Vic Sledge sprayed down his roof and patio cover.

“It’s hard to tell if this is old stuff or if there are yellow spots,” Sledge said.

“Maybe it’s my imagination, but I can still smell a little bit of it.”

Across the street, Bea O’Brien had rinsed out her hummingbird feeder and was rehanging it in a pine tree.

Like many residents, O’Brien said the inconvenience of cleaning up was a small price to pay for saving the county’s orchards and fields from the crop-destroying Mediterranean fruit fly.

“I think it’s something that had to be done, but I’m glad the first one’s over,” she said.

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Concerned about damage to the paint on their vehicles, some residents headed straight for the nearest carwash.

Anticipating a deluge of customers, the Camarillo Car Wash on Adolfo Road opened 30 minutes early at 7:30 a.m., called in extra workers and lowered its rates by $3 to $4.95.

Manager Frank Lopez said one construction company planned to bring in a fleet of 40 cars. Nearby St. John’s Seminary, where most of the Medflies have been found, also planned a high-volume visit.

Several hours later, however, employee Dave Wendell said the carwash had something less than a windfall.

“I think the longest line we had was four cars deep,” he said. “We were expecting to be bombarded.”

Despite repeated assurances that the minute amount of malathion dispersed over each acre posed no health risks, some residents remained unconvinced.

Odile Kulscar decided to pass on her usual morning jog.

Kulscar was washing her two cars, her sidewalk--everything outside her house--because her grandchildren were coming over.

“Some people are not concerned, but I am,” Kulscar said. “I don’t even want to breathe out here.”

But for other residents, the spraying was already a non-event.

At Arneill Ranch Park, Bill and Dorothy Guntner soaked up the sunshine as their 2-year-old granddaughter, Alisa, played on a jungle gym.

The couple, who live outside the spray zone, said they were not worried about lingering effects of the pesticide.

“To tell you the truth, I really haven’t given it a great deal of thought,” Bill Guntner said.

Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo and correspondent Jeff Mitchell contributed to this story.