Homeowner’s Nightmare Flows In With a Flood’s Fury : Storms: Rain-fed runoff snaps a Canyon Country man’s water and gas mains, unearths his septic tank and threatens to destroy his house.

The hissing that awakened John Muskavitch Friday at 3 a.m. was the harbinger of hell.

The Canyon Country resident quickly discovered the source of the noise--the main water pipe to his house had been snapped by a 100-foot-wide torrent flowing in what is usually a dry riverbed.

Soon afterward, Muskavitch heard another hissing sound. This time, the main gas line to his home had broken, dug up by the storm-driven river in front of his home, which sits just west of where Sand Canyon Road intersects Sierra Highway.

“Picture a big plastic pipe coming out of the water spewing gas,” said the 32-year-old financial aid adviser at Glendale Community College.

So strong was the smell of gas inside his home that Muskavitch opened doors and windows only to find a worse situation.

“The gas was even stronger outside . . . . It was nauseating,” he said.

The newly filled riverbed kept gas company workers from reaching his home, and it was an hour and a half before they were able to pinch the pipe shut from the other side of the river.

Muskavitch’s problems didn’t end there.

He really panicked when he looked out his back window to find that a creek along the rear of his property was quickly growing into a river too, prompting mud to flow around his home.

He made his first attempt to flee when his neighbor, Ben Ruth, a California Highway Patrol officer, threw a rope to him from across the river.

“I took two steps into the water and went right under,” Muskavitch said. “I was told that I looked like Splash the Mermaid the way my feet went up in the air.”

After his brush with immersion, Muskavitch, his roommate Tony Benavente, who is on crutches after recent hip surgery, and Muskavitch’s nephew, Rodney Aquino, tried another escape route.

They walked a quarter of a mile to a bridge that crosses the creek behind his house, where he was met by Ruth, who drove them to safety.

He spent Friday night with a friend in Sylmar, only to experience a fresh set of disasters when he returned to his house Saturday morning.

“I’m driving down the road and I could see this huge tank,” Muskavitch said. “I said to myself, “no, that can’t be my septic tank.’ ”

It was.

After his escape Friday, the raging river had ripped out the tank and carried it about 2,000 feet away from his home. His fence and landscaping were also gone.

“My Jacuzzi and my house are still there, but they won’t be by Monday,” Muskavitch said.

The devastation was caused in part by the strength of the river’s current, but also by a trailer across the river that was swept into the water, rerouting the flow.

“The river had changed,” Muskavitch said. “Instead of going in a straight line, it was flowing at an angle and curving.” His car and Benavente’s van also remained stranded.

By nightfall Saturday, the water hadn’t made its way into his home. But Muskavitch said it’s only a matter of time before it does, and that will probably force him into financial ruin.

“I am so emotionally drained from this it’s pathetic,” said Muskavitch, sobbing during a telephone interview. “I have no tears left to cry and then somehow I find them again.”

* OUTCRY: Agoura Hills storm victims criticize city. B3