TOPANGA : Emergency Meeting to Discuss Mudslides

Conservationists and soil experts will hold an emergency meeting Thursday to help prepare residents of fire-affected areas for the possibility of mud- and ash slides during the coming rainy season.

“We want to give people a better idea what’s going to happen on these bare slopes, where there is no vegetation left to slow down the water flow,” said Terry Huff of the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service. “It can get messy.”

During the next rainfall, ash and other fire debris resting lightly on the blackened slopes between Old Topanga and Malibu are expected to congeal and flow onto back yards, roads and creek beds, Huff said.

If the rains are heavy, he said, deep fissures may form where the water runoff is more concentrated than usual, potentially causing severe soil erosion.

Forecasters on Tuesday predicted a slight chance of rain tonight, with an increasing chance of rain Thursday. At the meeting, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the Topanga Elementary School auditorium, residents who live in or near charred areas will receive information on how to use sandbags to control the flow of debris, the pros and cons of reseeding hillsides and other methods for stabilizing slopes.

Contractors and engineers also will be on hand to answer questions about specific problems, said arborist Rosi Dagit, a consultant who organized the meeting.

Dagit said there is an urgent need to get this information to residents because of the timing of fires that swept through more than 200,000 acres in the Los Angeles area during the past two weeks.

“It’s going to take at least a week for the county to do their damage survey reports,” Dagit said. “We don’t have that much time, because it’s due to rain any day now. So, hopefully, we can get some preventive steps in place, rather than waiting.”

Clyde Sims, assistant chief of forestry for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said sandbags are expected to be available at fire stations by the end of the week, along with printed information about how to stack them to keep debris away from homes and other buildings.