Only 2 Leave : Life in Malibu Calm Despite Threat of Slide

Cary Black returned to her beachfront Malibu apartment four days ago and spotted a cryptic sign on the front door that declared her home was “UNSAFE” and should not be entered.

“I thought the monster from the deep lagoon was in there,” Black recalled Saturday.

But no, it was just another of the little inconveniences that Malibu residents have learned to tolerate. The hillside across Pacific Coast Highway was cracking and threatening to crash down on her home.

No big thing.

“Everyone says living in Malibu is like playing Russian roulette,” said Black, who pays $1,700 a month for a three-bedroom apartment. “You take a certain amount of risk living here.”

Slide Called Imminent

Despite warnings from geologists that a major rock slide is imminent in the 20400 block of Pacific Coast Highway, only two of 16 families ordered Wednesday by Los Angeles County officials to evacuate had left their homes by Saturday.

The others appealed the evacuation notices and were awaiting a hearing on what could amount to a misdemeanor violation. They spent the day sunbathing on their decks, jogging, watering house plants and otherwise ignoring the dire predictions.

State and county officials said the residents will regret their nonchalance.

“The hillside is cracked all the way through,” state geologist Al Parmer said. “We expect a good-size fall. We just can’t say when.”

Parmer said the slide could come today or next winter and will range in magnitude from 10,000 to 60,000 cubic yards. By comparison, he said, a “moderate” slide last Sunday showered down about 400 cubic yards of earth onto the highway, forcing a 12-hour road closure.

That slide occurred within a few hundred feet of the threatened neighborhood, and it was enough to convince Ron Rainey to pay heed to the geologists’ predictions. A moving van was parked Saturday alongside his Mercedes-Benz, which bears a license plate frame that reads, “Malibu--A Way of Life.”

“I’ve lived here seven years and there have always been problems, but they’ve always been of the accident nature--something you really couldn’t predict,” said Rainey, who has sublet an apartment in Los Angeles. “This is not an accident. This is something that is actively happening.”

Rainey said his concern peaked after last Sunday’s slide, which caused considerable ruckus but never disturbed his sleep.

Resident Want Wall

“My bedroom is in the front of the house, and all I ever hear is the ocean,” Rainey said. “I slept through the first slide. If the next is bigger and directly in front of my home, I might not wake up until I land in the ocean.”

Another Malibu resident, Bruce McIntosh, spent the last several days organizing a group to try to force the California Department of Transportation to build a retaining wall on the highway to protect the homes. McIntosh maintained that if the residents were to evacuate, Caltrans would ignore the protection demands because no lives would be jeopardized.

“If we were to leave, nothing would be done,” McIntosh said.

Caltrans spokesman Jim McCullough said that while he understood McIntosh’s frustrations, a retaining wall would be powerless against the force of the tumbling earth.

‘Would Just Override’

“There’s just too much material,” McCullough said. “It would just override the wall.”

Despite the ominous predictions, Black intends to stay put. Pointing out her living room window to the glistening Pacific Ocean, she explained:

“You sit here and watch the whales go by and the porpoises play. After spending the day in the city, it’s nice to get away. This is worth saving and preserving.

“I’m sure there are people saying, ‘Aw, those fools. They get what they deserve.’ But they’re the ones who come out here religiously every Saturday and Sunday with their binoculars and suntan lotion and sit in their beach chairs on our porch all day.”