As Carol Budfuloski sat in the living room Sunday of her Villa Del Arroyo mobile home, she could feel water roll beneath the floor as cars created waves.

Her street was a pool of calf-high brown water, with dirt and muck forming a top skin like pudding. It drowned the first of four steps leading to her door.

Standing on the porch watching the unrelenting rain, Harold Budfuloski explained that the couple evacuated in October 2003 after embers showered their eastern Moorpark home, they were surrounded by 25-foot flames and wind gusts blew a fireball down the street.

Now this.

They joked that they expect locusts this summer.

When fires gnawed the hillsides and charred a handful of park homes more than a year ago, the majority of residents chose to flee. On Sunday, rains turned park streets into marshes that seeped over front lawns and front tires. Water rose high enough to make flower garden leaves float like lily pads. As the park's Los Angeles Avenue entrance was saturated into a quicksand-thick stream of mud strewn with tire tracks and puddles, residents faced the opposite problem: They were trapped.

Floods and debris-littered roads left homeowners with little to do but gather under umbrellas, snap pictures and scrutinize whether pumps from the Simi Valley public works department were slurping away the mess.

Later Sunday, the road was clear enough that residents could have escaped, but many chose to stay. Their attitude was that, after surviving fire, they could survive the flood.

"I rode out the fires last year," said Bill Kamp, a 75-year-old resident who tried escaping to Simi Valley, then returned home when he found flooded roads. "I'll put up with this."

Water rescue teams from the county sheriff's and fire departments patrolled late Sunday morning and debated, as a precaution, evacuating the residents of eight homes to the community's recreation center. There were fears that a buildup of water would knock homes off their foundations, said Battalion Chief Norm Plott.

Inside the park, the lucky awoke to puddles. Then there were homeowners such as Richard Jefferson, 50. He stood in his driveway Sunday with pants rolled at the cuff and brown water pooling almost to his knees.

The rain caused his home to shift, he said. Paneling in his living room popped. He nailed it in place, only to see it pop again.

"It's never been this high," he said, hands in his pockets and face slumped toward the waters below. "I'm not insured for this."

Rescue workers were spread thin. That's why Betty Fletcher -- a barefoot, 62-year-old lady with a clump of dirt stuck to her big toe -- used a shovel to scoop leaves and debris out of a storm drain on her street.

As she unclogged the drain, she explained that she had also packed an evacuation kit: clothes and a carrier for her cat, Mali.

When she ran from the fires in 2003, she only had time to grab her passport. With days of rain ahead, she thought she should be more prepared this time.

But what she and others say they are not prepared to do is leave this park permanently. This is a place where she sees egrets and antler-topped bucks from her backyard window. She is surrounded by beauty, nature and plenty of animals.

"This is the greatest place in the world," she said from under the hood of her jacket in the rain. "It's a lovely place when it's not being burned or flooded."