Water Floods Homes in Wealthy Community : Hidden Hills: Thirty or more houses are affected in the area where a controversial storm drain project is nearing completion.

After the mud and knee-deep current nearly sucked her black leather shoes off several times Monday, Grace Iudicello gave in and trudged several hundred yards barefoot to her daughter-in-law’s house on Long Valley Road in Hidden Hills.

Iudicello, who said she is in her late 70s; her daughter-in-law, Fay, and her granddaughter, Jennifer, 7, had gone out on a brief shopping trip. When they came back, the road--where a storm drain project that once set off a local political upheaval is nearing completion--had become a river.

“We would never have gone out if we’d known it was going to pour like that,” Fay Iudicello said as she and the others stood shivering and dripping wet, but otherwise unharmed.

Residents of the wealthy hillside enclave at the west end of the San Fernando Valley said the several-foot-deep torrent had appeared suddenly. Although the storm drain had been installed beneath the length of the road, it had been hooked up only along a portion of the southern end. The roadbed had been graded after the drain was put in, but was not yet paved and the churning waters had cut sharp furrows.

Thirty or more expensive ranch houses at the southern end of the road were flooded, as was City Hall, where yellowish water stood six inches deep on the floor. City staff members were shuttled out one by one in a four-wheel-drive vehicle at the end of the workday, leaving their cars behind.

Several houses on Round Meadow Road, near the gated city’s southwestern entrance, were inundated with up to a foot of water.

“All the rooms were under water; it came in all over the house,” said Sue Singer, who has lived in the 5200 block of Round Meadow for 14 years. “This is the worst it’s ever been. We’ve never seen it like this.”

She had called the Los Angeles County Fire Department for assistance, and a crew had set up a water removal pump at her house and those of several neighbors. Fire officials said they had responded to hundreds of such calls throughout the Malibu district, which stretches from the western San Fernando Valley to the coast, and includes Hidden Hills.

Monty Fisher, a volunteer emergency service officer for the city, said the controversial storm drain was not involved in the flood. He said the cause of the flooding was a debris-blocked gully behind houses on the west side of Long Valley. He said dirt, branches and other debris had washed down the gully, hanging up at bridges, culverts and other barriers.

As a result, the gully, which is normally barely damp, gushed to the top of its banks, and the water knocked down corrals, chain-link fences and horse bridges, and undermined steep hillsides. The water then spilled onto the road, creating an alternate channel.

The flooding worsened for several hours around midday but began receding by early afternoon, even though rain poured down harder than ever. A National Weather Service spokeswoman said five inches of rain had fallen on the western San Fernando Valley by early afternoon.

Pamela and Peter Padin, who live on Long Valley Road just below City Hall, questioned whether the still-incomplete construction project had added to their woes, which included water damage to antique English pine furniture dating to the 1850s.

“I just can’t imagine that this needed to happen,” Pamela Padin said.

Several residents said the $4.9-million storm drain project should not have been begun during the winter rainy season, claiming that the flooding would have been less if the paving had been completed.

But City Councilman Howard Klein, whose house on Long Valley was among those flooded, said it was a lucky break that at least part of the storm drain was functional. “If it wasn’t for them hooking up down below, we’d be in major trouble,” he said.

The storm drain was first proposed after a 1981 flood that damaged more than 25 houses, Klein said. To finance the project, the city created a Redevelopment Agency. That agency became the target of sharp criticism by the moneyed residents of the city because its formation obligated Hidden Hills to allow the construction of some lower-cost housing, leading to a voter revolt that ousted three of the five City Council members.

Eventually, the agency was disbanded and the county last year came up with the money for the storm drain project.