COVER STORY : Putting a Price Tag on Peace of Mind : Pasadena Glen needs $1.5 million to safeguard against floods. How much should be spent to save a special slice of suburbia for 38 families?

Linda Kamb and her neighbors in Pasadena Glen have few doubts about why they risk floods and fire to live in a verdant canyon in the foothills above Pasadena. They love the thick canopy of California live oaks, the melody of birds singing in the mornings, and especially the murmuring creek that lulls them to sleep at night.

Last week, however, a wave of liquid mud crashed down the creek bed near their houses, and onto the street, raising the brook’s gentle lullaby to the deafening roar of a locomotive.

“There was a terrific rumble,” said Kamb, a resident in the Glen since 1938. “It sounded like a freight train.”

A brief torrent of rain the night of Feb. 7 turned the fire-bared earth of Pasadena Glen into a loose mixture of mud and water that cascaded down the steep slopes behind the Glen, carrying thousands of cubic yards of logs, rocks and sediment along the creek.

At the intersection of the channel and Pasadena Glen Road, the flow burst through sandbag barriers and spilled into the street.

Awesome as it was, last week’s mudflow was only a preview of what could happen during heavier storms. The storm, which brought less than an inch and a half of rain, was modest for the Glen, where 3 to 6 inches in a 24-hour period is common.

Debris barriers that could have contained the deluge were under construction when it hit. But even if the work had been completed, it would have been little help in a larger storm, said Bob Dean, district manager for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service.

The unique nature of the flood threat in the Glen has underscored questions about what cost is appropriate to save the 38 homes left after October’s fire. Long-term measures to protect against potentially life-endangering mudflows would cost close to $1 million after almost $500,000 has already been spent.

The county public works department had just finished clearing accumulated rocks and tree limbs from a barrier above the Glen when the storm hit. The next day, the barrier of six-foot steel posts set several feet apart to catch large objects was full again, nearly overflowing with boulders. The bars were bent from the force of the onslaught, and one massive boulder, six feet in diameter, jutted out between them.

“If those had come through, they would have taken out houses,” said Linda Williams, president of the Pasadena Glen Improvement Assn.

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A mudflow begins when sediment and debris collect in narrow mountain ravines, forming a natural dam that traps water, rocks and dirt behind it. When enough accumulates, the dam bursts, and a flash flood rips down the canyon at more than 50 miles an hour, Dean said. Rocks hurtling along with it create the trainlike rumble that residents remember.

Stripped of vegetation by the Oct. 27 fire, the hills above the Glen are especially vulnerable to erosion during storms. Foliage cushions the force of the rain, root systems hold soil in place, and trees and chaparral can brake tumbling boulders.

Without these protections the mountain slopes act as a funnel that crumbles in on itself. And while other canyon communities face mudslides, Pasadena Glen has an unusually large watershed--600 acres--that presses through a 17-foot channel.

In addition, other canyon areas have debris basins--large reservoirs to collect the mud and rocks. But Pasadena Glen, developed in the early 1900s, was built so high that there is no place above it to put such a basin.

Instead, the Glen’s flood-control system calls for allowing the water to rush down channels and through three culverts running under the road, each one to five feet in diameter.

But last week, the stream of mud and boulders clogged the three pipes, and the backed-up mud swept down the street.

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Tim Delia was watching the weather report Feb. 7 evening while a light drizzle sprinkled his house.

“Suddenly it sounded like they were moving heavy equipment into the Glen, and then it sounded louder,” he said. “Everything started to shake. I looked out. . .and saw two feet of mud just bashing down the street.”

Delia’s neighbor Pauline Doucet recalled, “It was like an earthquake that wouldn’t stop. You could really feel the shaking.”

Once the initial surge subsided, viscous mud oozed down the street at 5 to 10 miles an hour. “It was like warm pudding,” Glen resident Jack Brock recalled.

Two-foot-high barricades, erected by residents as a precautionary measure, kept most of the mud off their lawns, but the road was inundated. At that point, the residents had to decide whether to remain in their homes or trudge through knee-deep sludge to escape the muck.

Firefighters helped Doucet and her stepdaughter Dawn Pickard escape, but not before Pickard’s boots slipped off three times in the mud. Brad Dickason carried his frightened, 75-pound golden retriever to high ground. Others like Brock, a 26-year resident of the Glen and veteran of the 1969 mudslides, chose to stay, assuming that the worst was over.

“We’d all been preached to here since the fire that gloom and doom is on its way,” Brock said.

So why live there at all?

“We don’t have street lights, we don’t have traffic, we don’t have noise,” said Gala Conrad, watching her 6-year-old son, Kyle, struggle to shovel mud off the lawn the day after the storm. “The boys go out collecting tadpoles and frogs. . . . We get our own little piece of heaven up here in suburbia.”

Steve Young grew up in the Glen. He slid down the road in his truck in a 1980 mudslide, and his home burned down in last year’s fire.

Still, he intends to stay. Young and his father now live in trailers on their burnt-out home sites, and are planning to rebuild.

“You love (this place) for what it is,” he said. “You take what it throws back at you, but you love it for what it is.”

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The rocks and mud that it threw back last week may have been the result of unlucky timing as much as an act of fate.

Dean said the bulk of the mess would have been avoided if several construction projects had been completed before the rain struck.

A month ago, the Soil Conservation Service awarded a nearly $200,000 contract to Fontana-based Cunningham-Davis Corp. to build a second barrier, known as a trash rack, at the top of the Glen, as well as smaller barriers along a channel flowing into the Glen from Winifred Canyon. Dean said these barriers, which weren’t in place when last week’s storm struck, would have held back debris that clogged culverts and caused flooding.

The contractor had also begun work to line the Winifred Canyon channel with concrete.

The contractor was nearing completion of the projects when the mud flow struck the Glen. The steel support structure for the Winifred channel was completed, and the concrete would have been poured that week. The torrent washed away nearly two weeks of work, twisting the steel bars into a spaghetti-like jumble that collected at the bottom of the channel.

The mud flow also damaged foundation work on the new trash rack under construction north of the existing one.

John O’Neill, Cunningham-Davis’ construction superintendent, said his workers were moving as fast as they could and had more than a week to go before completing the projects. Last week, Soil Conservation Service officials told the contractor to work his crews around the clock to finish the job.

Also, volunteers working under the direction of the Forest Service continued laying straw matting down on a 70-acre portion of the mountainside above the Glen. The mats, which the Forest Service purchased for about $180,000, are designed to hold the soil in place during rain.

Several residents said the only way to control the debris flows in the Glen is to construct large, boxlike culverts at each of three points where the creek flows beneath the road. The existing culverts are small, and large boulders and branches clog them, causing the water and debris to jump the channel as it did Feb. 7.

Even car-size boulders 8 feet in diameter could roll through the larger culverts, which together might cost $900,000 or more to build, according to Terry McGough, a Glen resident who lost his home in the Oct. 27 fire.

Dean supports the idea. “The culverts would probably solve about 95% of all of the problems,” he said. “It’s a more permanent solution.”

Al Tizani of the state Office of Emergency Services said his agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have determined that the Glen may be eligible for funding that would help build those culverts.

However, the residents need to find a local sponsor to pick up about 6% of the cost. They’re still negotiating with the county for funding.

The culverts and other issues affecting the Glen, such as the county’s insistence that the residents provide turnouts for emergency vehicles, are being considered by a task force of homeowners and county officials. Their main job is to recommend guidelines for rebuilding in the Glen to the County Board of Supervisors.

Since the October fire that destroyed 27 of the Glen’s 65 homes, the Soil Conservation Service and the Forest Service have spent close to $500,000 on flood-control projects in and around the Glen. Last week, the Soil Conservation Service picked up the $50,000 bill for cleaning up the mess of boulders, dirt and branches left by the storm. It is unclear, however, who will pay $30,000 or more to clean out the Glen’s debris barriers after future storms.

Dean said it is rare for the federal government to pay 100% of the costs of such flood-control projects in disaster areas. Usually, he said, a local agency has to help pay. But, in this case, the local agency is the financially strapped Kinneloa Irrigation District, which lost many of its ratepayers when their homes were burned in the fire.

The water district successfully argued that it suffered from economic hardship, clearing the way for federal funding of some of the flood control projects under way in the Glen. Also, Dean said, requests for funding were shoved along by local lawmakers and President Clinton, who met with Glen residents during a recent visit to Pasadena.

“In most cases we’ll come in after a flood and help the community rebuild (its flood protection) to existing levels,” Dean said. “But in the case of the Glen an exception was made because of the extreme danger to life and property. We’ve gone more into the preventive mode.”

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Glen residents have taken prevention into their own hands too, creating an emergency neighborhood telephone network and adopting a policy to evacuate during rains. But as last week’s flood showed, some remained despite the risk.

A proposed county regulation may put the unwritten code of the Glen--”Live here at your own risk”--in writing. Schindler said the county is creating a flood plain map of the Glen that will identify areas most endangered by floods. Residents who live on those sites would be required to adhere to stricter building codes and a warning would be included in the deed of the house.

Some question the cost of protecting the Glen.

“I guess when you get to the bottom line, they should never have allowed anyone to build in this Glen. There’s just too many problems,” resident Paul Kolar said. “I suppose it would have been cheaper to just buy everyone out and turn this into a glen for hiking.”

Anna McConnell surveyed what was left of her front yard the day after the storm. Water flowed in channels through clumps of mud, and a few broken cacti--remnants of her prized garden--lay strewn on the ground. Although the mudflow washed away the cacti, some eight feet tall, she said it won’t uproot her.

“I’ve lived here 42 years and this is the worst I’ve seen,” she said. “But I’m not going to move out. My husband and I built this place and I’m staying.”