Letter: Beacon RV Park tenants get run-around

Published 8:28 am Monday, May 30, 2022

The challenges and unspeakable abuses that we, the residents of Beacon RV Park in Ilwaco, have been subjected to during the last three or four months are many. Most recently we are suffering from an infestation of giant wharf rats roaming the park due to the dumpster (the size of a train car), which for the last few weeks has been overflowing with refuse.

On Wednesday, May 25, as the evening was closing in, I took my dog out. I noticed there were 8-9 wharf rats, which were larger than my 8-pound pooch. The rats did not move at all despite the noise I made or the sight of my flash light.

The following morning, on Thursday, I drove to the offices of the health department on Sandridge Road to report this rat problem, and request that someone from the department come to Beacon RV to check on the situation and do something about it. I was told they couldn’t do anything, as the health department was not the department to address this problem — that Community Development is in charge of this type of complaints.

I walked down the hall to Community Development. I was informed that they had responded to complaints received about the dumpster. The day before, on Wednesday, they had sent a letter to Michael and Denise Werner, new owners of Beacon RV Park, notifying them that they had two weeks from the time of receipt of that letter to fix the rat infestation-dumpster problem, otherwise they would be fined.

I asked what we, the tenants of the park, were supposed do in the meantime, that two weeks living among wharf rats was dangerous, unsanitary, and inhumane. They told me to report it to the sheriff’s office.

I walked down to the sheriff’s office. As there was not a deputy on site who could help, I used the office’s phone to speak with a deputy. He informed me that Ilwaco was out of their jurisdiction, and I needed to contact the Long Beach Police Department.

I drove to Long Beach to the police department. No police officer was on site. I then phoned 911 and requested to see an officer. I waited a few minutes. When the officer arrived, he informed me that the police did not respond to rat problems. He told me there was nothing they could do for the tenants at Beacon RV.

The following day a new dumpster was delivered. It was the same size, unreachable by most of the park’s residents, but with a nasty twist. There is now a ladder against the side of the dumpster as if the elderly and disabled people here would find it less dangerous to be hanging onto a ladder and a bag of trash six feet off the ground over mud, slime and rat poop. Under the old owners, we used to have accessible trash cans, place for recycling and regular trash removal.

These are examples of the lack of prompt response that we, the tenants at Beacon RV have received. First, it was the city of Ilwaco who refused, and continues to refuse, to address the immediate crisis about the eviction notices we received from the Werners, telling us that the park is under port jurisdiction.

SUSAN A. GILL

Ilwaco