Community members rallied in support of Beacon RV Park residents Monday morning in Ilwaco. The gathering, comprised of concerned local citizens and park residents, assembled around 7:30 a.m. Monday until late morning, when more trailers were slated to demolished.

ILWACO — Around a dozen community members rallied in support of Beacon RV Park residents Monday morning in Ilwaco.

The gathering, comprised of concerned local citizens and park residents, assembled around 7:30 a.m. Monday until late morning, when more trailers were slated to be demolished.

Not enough time, money

Several remaining Beacon RV Park residents voiced their concerns regarding the new ownership, Deer Park Meadows Investments, which they felt hasn’t provided adequate time or compensation for relocation, particularly for retired residents, many living on a fixed income.

A crew contracted by Deer Park Meadows worked to remove debris around the perimeter of the park, piling wood scraps and remnants of an old garden as park residents spoke about their plight.

“They could wait until we’re gone to destroy the trailers. I had to pull glass out of my dog’s mouth yesterday,” said Dustin Kirby, 24. Kirby relocated from Arkansas to Ilwaco last summer to work in seafood processing after his former job at a paper mill was lost due to covid closures. He now feels stuck at the park.

“I had a job up here so I came. But now I can’t afford the $1,700 to move into the Driftwood. The [Beacon RV] park does need remodeled but they need to give us time to leave — it’s not like we’re trying to stay here. We’re trying to come up with the money to leave,” Kirby said.

“The Driftwood is the plan — I just don’t have the money. We know we have to leave, we just need enough time to find somewhere to go. We need at least six months.”

The $2,000 offered by the new park owners to help relocate isn’t enough, he said.

“Some of the trailers can’t be pulled; $2,000 isn’t going to cover their trailer and rent.”

Roughly one-third of the park’s full-time residents still remain, including four children, said Bruce Busse, 59, a resident since 2012. Many at the park are retired or living on a fixed income, incapable of affording the expense to relocate.

“They bought off the people who could afford to leave. Now we’re down to who can’t afford to leave,” he said.

“Most of these trailers are condemnable. People have nowhere to go and they’ve made a paltry offer of $2,000. If you don’t have a trailer, $2,000 doesn’t get you anything. A lot of people here live off $700 to $800 a month.”

Busse said their fight has been ignored by some in the community and at the port.

“There’s a lot of people who feel we should just be shoved in the river, but some of us have worked really hard, paid our taxes, dues and rent every month,” he said. “We only have about eight renters remaining now out of 22.”

Among the supporters of the park residents was Debby Moggio, of Ocean Park, who called the called the ongoing actions of the park owners “unforgivable.”

“There’s some damage that’s been done here that’s very visible, like the broken glass, that presents a clear and present danger to people that live here, but what’s more important is the damage you don’t see … the people who are afraid to come out of their homes, who are afraid to stay in their homes, who are afraid to answer their door and access their daily lives — they’re just hiding,” Moggio said. “And that’s unforgivable. It’s not in America how we’re supposed to treat our neighbors. We’re all in this together, whether you live in the trailer park or up in Ocean Park. We’re all in this together.”

Spill inspected

On Monday morning, around 9 a.m., members of the Long Beach Police Department and officials from the Pacific County Department of Community Development arrived to inspect a reported sewage spill from a trailer demolition last Friday. Two more trailers in the park were marked in orange paint with their impending demolition.

“We got a report that sewage was spilled during the demolition of one of the trailers, so we’re coming to verify,” said Pacific County Department of Community Development Director Shawn Humphreys, who was accompanied by environmental health specialist Eric McMillan.

“There’s not really any evidence of a spill that we could verify, that we could do an enforcement on, but it was brought to our attention that this site has an active leak going on,” Humphreys said.

Humphreys and McMillan spread lime on the spot to raise the PH, kill the bacteria and mitigate the public health risk.

“We’ll have code enforcement check back later to make sure the leak gets fixed,” Humphreys said.