DANA POINT
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Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Paul Ratchford said the city became a virtual ghost town when residents almost unanimously chose to stay indoors New Year’s Eve.
“It was scary. In the middle of the night it was almost deserted,” said Ratchford, Dana Point’s chief of police services. “If you rode through the neighborhoods it was dark, cold and quiet.”
Dana Point kept a cadre of city employees, public works workers and law enforcement personnel on standby Friday night to handle any safety problems and make sure utilities continued working in 2000.
Ratchford said the evening was even quieter than a typical weekend night in Dana Point, leaving the eight people monitoring the city with a lot of time on their hands.
“We didn’t have anything to do. We sat around and ate,” he said. “I’m glad it happened that way, but it was very quiet.”
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