Business owners under fire following blaze
By Sylvie Belmond belmond@theacorn.com

Two local partners who were renting the old Egg City complex north of Moorpark to manufacture home decorating products lost their business to the recent Shekell fire.

Now, in the wake of the disaster, Michelle Bechard and her husband Rony Havive of Oak Park are contending with accusations that their business, MGR Designs International Inc., was guilty of multiple code violations.

The Ventura County Fire Department is still investigating the exact cause of the two Moorpark fires. One of them started near MGR Designs and later merged into another fire that started about five hours later.

The business had been investigated for fire, safety and planning, and building code violations, said Todd Collart, the county’s manager of zoning administration.

Although several Ventura County employees confirmed that the code violations existed, the conditions at the site aren’t believed to have caused the fastmoving fire. The cause was related to power lines, said Capt. Barry Parker of the Ventura County Fire Department. Ted Smith, the department’s chief arson investigator, concurred.

If conditions at MGR Designs were indeed hazardous, the fire department would have closed the business down, Bechard said.

“We worked with all the different agencies complying with whatever they asked for,” said Bechard, who pointed out that MGR Designs had a sprinkler system and two employees who were assigned to handle fire safety matters.

MGR, which employed approximately 160 people, wasn’t insured for the total loss.

“We’ve lost everything; a lot of people are unemployed,” said Bechard.

Other violations

MGR Designs didn’t have a planning permit to operate in the rural Moorpark area, but the owners said they were trying to remediate the matter.

The couple had been seeking a new permit since early 2003, an official said.

The property is zoned for agricultural purposes, but Bechard said county planners felt MGR Designs was not operating an agricultural business.

“They took us in front of the (county) agricultural board, and the board verified that we are indeed related to agriculture,” Bechard said.

The company was growing organic flowers on the site and elsewhere in California, she said.

There were also concerns about traffic, but most of the employees lived in Santa Paula and were not using the busy Grimes Canyon Road and Highway 118 intersection, Bechard said.

“The county began to investigate because some people had complained,” said Jack Phillips, head of the county’s building and safety department.

“The building (a former chicken ranch) had been used differently in the past, so it was undergoing a change of use,” Phillips said.

MGR Designs hired an architect, who was making plans to upgrade the facility and satisfy the code provisions.

The county was ready to increase enforcement efforts if they were needed, but the company appeared to be cooperating, said Phillips, who had not personally visited the property.

“It’s unfortunate the business was lost and jobs were lost, but it’s also unfortunate that we still had violations on the property,” Phillips said.

Bitter feelings

Mike Plater, a neighboring rancher who said he lost his entire avocado orchard to the fire, felt no sympathy for MGR Designs.

“I’ve been trying to get that business to move for three years,” Plater said. “It took too long to correct the violations.”

Plater said he videotaped 95 cars in the parking lot and many had multiple occupants. The building was overcrowded, he said. “There were combustible materials outside of the building and that caused my loss,” he said.

“In my opinion, it was criminal negligence on the part of the business owner, the property owner and the county not to put these circumstances to bed earlier.”

The orchard that Plater ran was 30 years old.

“I’m basically ruined,” said Plater, who met with county department heads a month earlier to warn them about the impending fire season and the hazards that existed on MGR’s property.

Bechard said when they first moved to the area, Plater was nice to them, but that the relationship between the two neighbors deteriorated.

Claims that MGR aggravated the fire are speculative, arson officials said.

An investigation into the fire continues.

Community support

MGR Designs began in 2001 making home decorating products using dried flowers and grew quickly to serve local, national and international customers. It moved to rural Moorpark in 2003.

The owners weren’t alone Sun., Dec. 2 as they watched on national television while the business burned.

Bechard and Havive immediately received support from friends and spiritual leaders who rushed to their home when they heard the news.

“It’s a big shame that this has taken place,” said Rabbi Yisroel Levine of the Chabad of Oak Park.

Reestablishing a business will be difficult to do, but the husband and wife team said their faith will help them meet the challenge.

“I was there to give them support and to tell them that God has an ultimate plan,” Levine said.

Jennifer Driscoll, a partner of West Haven Design, a home accessory retailer in Camarillo that purchased potpourri from MGR, hopes people will help the employees who lost their jobs prior to the holidays.

Driscoll visited the site many times and defended its business practices.

“It was nice,” said Driscoll, who dismissed reports that MGR Designs employed illegal aliens in subpar conditions.

Driscoll contacted the Moorpark Rotary Club, which is gathering donations for fire victims, to make sure the MGR employees will be helped.

People who wish to donate funds may send checks for the MGR employees to the Moorpark Fire Fund, care of the Rotary Club of Moorpark, PO Box 172, Moorpark, CA 93020. For more information, call Rotary president Jim Arthur at (805) 492-9006.

The donations are not tax deductible because the funds aren’t earmarked for an official nonprofit account, Arthur said.

In addition to MGR Designs, the 13,600acre Shekell fire destroyed five homes and damaged five others. Several structures were also destroyed and significant crop damage was reported in the rural region north of Moorpark.