Downpour Brings Mud to Malibu

An intense winter downpour-- the third major storm to hit the region in two weeks--brought heavy snowfalls to local mountains and left Malibu residents once again digging out of mud and debris that surged down rain-soaked hillsides.

The powerful cloudbursts Sunday trapped some beachfront residents in their homes and cars, forced a brief closing of Interstate 5 at the Grapevine and set loose mudslides that shut down a portion of Pacific Coast Highway.

Police also closed the flood-prone Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area to motorists for about eight hours as waters behind Sepulveda Dam rose to near-overflow levels.

Sunday’s showers, which dropped up to three inches of rain along the coast and as much as a foot of snow in the mountains, are expected to taper off early today, forecasters say, leaving the city with clear skies to calculate the damage.

The rain-slick freeways and roadways caused major traffic tie-ups and contributed to numerous accidents, including three fatalities in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

An unidentified man was killed Sunday morning when his car skidded out of control on the westbound Artesia Freeway near Lakewood Boulevard. The man, who was not wearing a seat belt, died when he was thrown from his car.

In Orange County, two people died when they lost control of their van on the rain-slick Artesia Freeway. The van was hit by a big-rig truck on the freeway near Yorba Linda, a California Highway Patrol officer said.

The rain was also blamed for two power outages Sunday that left more than 1,600 Southern California Edison customers in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica without electricity for two hours, an Edison spokesman said.

As snow fell over the Grapevine area, the California Highway Patrol closed Interstate 5 from Lake Hughes Road in Castaic to Lavalle Road in Kern County from 1:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Also as a precaution, Los Angeles police closed off roads into the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area, where sudden floodwaters trapped a number of motorists two years ago. The roads were shut down from about 4 a.m. until noon.

In Malibu, rescue workers raced Sunday to evacuate residents whose homes were threatened by the movement of water, mud and rocks toward the sea. Garages and front doors of more than 50 homes along PCH were inundated.

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Los Angeles county lifeguards and sheriff’s deputies used ropes to rescue Christa Roberts and her two sons, ages 9 and 10, from their home on Carbon Canyon Road, where a river of water about 4 feet deep and 15 feet wide swept down the canyon, blocking their escape.

Nasier Filippin, a Big Rock resident who was on his way to the ski slopes, refused to leave his Mercedes when it became mired in the mud near the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Big Rock Drive. Filippin sat in the vehicle for nearly an hour and a half as the fast-moving water crept halfway up the silver car.

Filippin was finally plucked to safety by a lifeguard who was lowered to the vehicle by the scoop of a Caltrans caterpillar.

Standing under an umbrella on a stack of sandbags across from his car, Filippin said, “I’m very upset. Honest to God, I don’t want to talk about it.”

On Sunday, Caltrans skip loaders worked at scooping up the muck, filling dump trucks that unloaded the ooze over the side of the highway and down to the ocean at Las Flores Canyon Road and Big Rock Drive. Officials closed the highway between Topanga Canyon Road and Cross Creek Road.

At Las Flores Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway, an enormous mud flow filled the parking lot and part of the interior of the Charley Brown’s Sea Lion restaurant, and flowed into the ground floor of a nearby five-unit, two-story apartment complex.

“We thought we had it made because we didn’t get it in the other disasters, but it just came through our bedroom, broke the wall open . . . “ said a woman who lived in a ground-floor apartment with her husband and asked not to be named. “We couldn’t get the door open, but we finally got out. Everything is gone.”

A number of residents whose homes were hit in the Feb. 7 storm, which damaged at least 25 homes, found their homes inundated again by Sunday’s rain.

“A neighbor called at about 2 a.m. and told me to get ready to be evacuated,” said Sid Jacobson, who had just finished putting his garage door back up from damage caused by the last storm. “Then I heard a river that sounded like Niagara Falls come through. Then I went back to sleep. What the hell else am I going to do?”

Despite Jacobson’s sandbag preparations, a 20-by-30-foot section of asphalt pavement between the highway and his front door collapsed and dropped about 15 feet to the sand below. Jacobson surmised it gave way from the weight of the mud, rock and water.

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New areas of Malibu showed vulnerability to Sunday’s rain, alarming a number of residents along PCH just above Tuna Canyon Road, whose homes for the first time filled with mud. “I’ve been here 22 years and this mountain has never come down,” said Peppi Kelman, pointing to the hillside across from her muddy home. “This is the problem,” she said, pointing to Pena Creek, which runs into a cement drainage ditch on the mountainside above Pacific Coast Highway.

On Sunday morning, rain turned the creek into a rapidly moving river.