Malibu Siege Is by Media, Not Weather : Storm: Predicted flooding does not materialize, but reporters do. ‘I don’t think it’s ever been this bad before,’ one resident says.

While a small army of news people descended on Malibu in search of destruction Thursday, beach dweller Kathleen Garfield was preparing for the real excitement of the day--shopping at the town’s new health food market.

“It’s big news in Malibu,” Garfield said, as barely a trickle of rain fell and the sun occasionally glittered off the ocean. “Really, it’s very exciting.”

Garfield said that since the storm began, her biggest worry has been protecting her potted plants from the wind. She didn’t even bother taking in the patio furniture.

“This is nothing,” said the hardened seven-year veteran of Malibu beach life.

For all the hullabaloo about the mother of all storms and the potential damage in Malibu, the only problem for many residents has been fending off the horde of reporters looking for tales of woe and tragedy.

Compared to the storm last February, which triggered serious flooding across Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the dual-front assault that began Wednesday has been weaker and far more dispersed.

“This storm had the potential to drop a lot of rain, but there wasn’t any area it focused on,” Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, said Thursday afternoon.

Several more days of rain are expected, but many residents of Malibu are cautiously optimistic that they have weathered the worst.

Malibu became the focus of media attention because of the predicted high tides that could have threatened beachfront homes and the perennial threat of floods and mudslides in the canyons.

But even given the potential for damage, Malibu residents have been stunned by the size of the media force.

“The attention this week has been unreal,” said Margo Neal, who lives on Las Flores Mesa Drive. “I don’t think it’s ever been this bad before. Everyone has been chuckling.”

Garfield, whose beachfront patio was once washed away in a storm, said she woke up on the first morning of this storm to radio reports of impending disaster and residents fleeing Malibu for safer ground.

She got up and looked out a bank of windows at the ocean. “It was absolutely flat like a lake,” she said. “It must have been a slow news time.”

George Olendorf, who lives in the heart of the canyon flood zone on Las Flores Canyon Road, said that after so many storms, most residents already have taken the basic steps to protect their homes, such as building retaining walls or improving drainage.

Now, for any real damage to be done, a storm has to be concentrated and sustained. “It takes several days of rain and several big storms for anything to happen,” Olendorf said. “It hasn’t been that bad so far.”

Olendorf, who has lived at the site since 1979, spent years building a 250-foot-long, stone-and-concrete channel below his house to protect its foundation and guide the creek below him in a safe direction.

As the creek rose steadily in the rain, he had no worries.

“This storm is very minor in my book,” Olendorf said Thursday. “Unless, of course, we get eight inches in a hour tonight.”