Victims of Malibu Fire Battle City to Rebuild : Disaster: The hopes of a couple in Las Flores Canyon are on hold while officials consider a plan to buy their creekside land and use it for flood control.

In the Malibu canyon where Paul Mantee’s house burned to the ground last November, wildflowers have poked through the topsoil, lending a splash of color to the charred landscape.

“This is where I want to be,” said Mantee, a novelist and actor who is embroiled in a struggle to rebuild after losing everything in the fire.

But he fears that Malibu may try to take his property as a possible buffer against future disasters.

Although local officials have done much to speed recovery from a disaster that claimed 262 homes, Mantee and partner Susan Shaw are hostages to a debate about the future of their beloved Las Flores Canyon.

Aided by fee waivers and reduced red tape, scores of homeowners in other parts of Malibu are well along in clearing their building plans with city officials, and a few have begun construction.

Officials say at least 70 homeowners have attained permits from the city’s planning department, an ordinarily time-consuming process, and another three dozen are on the verge of doing so.

“We’ve tried to do everything to make it easier for fire victims to rebuild,” said Bob Benard, the city’s planning director.

It is a different story in Las Flores, where the fire denuded entire hillsides, leaving a canyon long plagued by floods and mudslides more vulnerable than ever.

Eager to take advantage of federal disaster relief, local officials are considering a plan that may include acquiring several properties along Las Flores Creek, including Mantee’s, to buttress a nearby landslide and ease the creek’s chronic flooding.

Depending on what is done, cost estimates range from $11 million upward.

“Our objective is to do what’s in the best interests of the people of the canyon and the community as a whole,” says John P. Clement, Malibu’s public works director.

Until the fire, Mantee and Shaw had lived in a creekside four-plex. They leased three of the units.

“I had just done this dreadfully cheap horror film in Romania and had sent back the money to remodel the kitchen,” recalled Mantee, perhaps best-known as Detective Al Corassa in the “Cagney & Lacey” TV series. “It was as if we’d fixed it up to burn.”

Now, he is uncertain if he will ever be able to rebuild.

Malibu’s elected officials are expected to decide by this summer whether to approve property acquisitions as part of plans to protect the canyon against future disasters.

The canyon engenders uncommon loyalty from its residents.

Its shady glens and ocean vistas make it popular with writers, artists and others looking for solitude. The creek is a magnet for deer and other wildlife.

But the canyon is also rife with ecological problems.

The lower portion lies at the foot of a giant landslide, which in 1984 gobbled up eight hillside homes and wiped out half a mile of Rambla Pacifico Road, cutting off the only direct route to Pacific Coast Highway for 550 residents on the west rim.

The slide changed the course of the creek, shoving it 60 yards to the east. Engineers say the slide still poses a threat to the creek and Las Flores Canyon Road, the only artery leading out of the canyon.

To the east, another 50 properties on Las Flores Mesa, whose residents must traverse the canyon to escape fire, are in danger of isolation if the canyon floods.

And officials are concerned that it will.

Because of the fires, soil experts say, the area could face increased danger from floods and landslides for the next eight years. It may take that long, they say, for the vegetation--vital for absorbing and dispersing rain--to regenerate.

To solve the problems, Malibu officials hope to persuade the federal government to help pay for securing or removing the landslide and dredging the creek to prevent flooding.

If that happened, supporters say, it would be possible to rebuild the part of Rambla Pacifico Road wiped out by the 1984 slide.

But the best and most affordable way to deal with the slide, some experts suggest, is to build a huge earthen buttress at its toe. That, in turn, would make it necessary to acquire some, if not all, of nine properties along the creek.

As the most vocal opponents of acquisition, Shaw and Mantee have been criticized by Rambla residents and others who see a chance to reopen the road.

Even some canyon residents see acquisitions as inevitable.

“They (city officials) are living in a fantasy world if they think they can somehow mitigate these problems without affecting properties along the creek,” said Madelyn Glickfeld, a member of the California Coastal Commission, whose Las Flores home was destroyed in the fire.

But Shaw and Mantee are undeterred.

They were encouraged recently when the Malibu council urged city engineers to come up with a solution that keeps acquisitions to a minimum.

“These are baby steps,” Shaw said. “We aren’t celebrating victory yet.”

The criticism, she says, comes with the territory.

“What keeps us going is this vision of where we want to be a year from now: That’s in our rebuilt home, listening to the creek gurgle and watching our roses grow.”