Day After the Deluge : Break in Weather Allows Flooded Residents to Dry Out and Dig Out

As the clouds parted and the sun peeked through for the first time in days, soggy residents of the San Fernando and surrounding valleys spent Wednesday digging out from under mountains of mud and drying out from more than a week of nearly constant rain.

The worst appeared to be over. The steady stream of storm systems still lurking off the coast are weaker than originally feared, forecasters say. Good news for thousands of people already battered by earthquakes and fires--giving them time to assess.

“This is the price of paradise,” said Teryl Brooks, who spent Wednesday scooping mud from her Malibou Lake home, flooded the day before. “You may have 350 days of paradise, but you do have days of hell, whether it be fire or flood.”

Across northern Los Angeles County, the cleanup was in full force.

“Today’s given us a pretty good chance to just go along and do a little cleanup,” said Curt Bianchi, general superintendent of the Los Angeles city street maintenance division.

About 20 of the 40 or so roads closed by Tuesday’s storms had been opened by midday Wednesday, Bianchi said. Many of the closures were in or around Sepulveda Basin and near the mouths of canyons.

The Army Corps of Engineers reported that Sepulveda Dam and other major flood basins were virtually empty of water. Los Angeles County public works crews fanned out into canyons and foothills to check 113 debris basins.

Los Angeles Unified School District maintenance crews also took advantage of the reprieve and swept through campuses Wednesday, unclogging drains, sandbagging offices and classrooms, and patching leaking roofs.

“We ran our tails off,” said Mike Loveridge, the East Valley maintenance and operations director. “All of our people have been out--carpenters, painters--everyone’s been out there.”

School district spokesman Bill Rivera said he did not know of any major damage to schools but that many campuses, particularly earthquake-damaged schools, had leaks. Topanga Elementary School, which will remain closed today, is the only campus closed due to the storms.

Joe Lucente, principal at Fenton Avenue Elementary School in Lake View Terrace, said the maintenance crews worked fast to place sandbags near offices and classrooms. “The water was creeping toward the doors,” Lucente said. “We had a few drains clogged but no major problems.”

At the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief center in Sherman Oaks, officials reported that calls to FEMA’s toll-free 800 number had picked up this week--apparently from earthquake victims whose homes had not yet been fully repaired, and who now were confronted by leaky roofs.

Apartment building owner Arnie Pompan was among those seeking aid. He lost one building to the Northridge earthquake and two others were severely damaged. The rains seeped through cracked roofs and walls, making life miserable for dozens of families.

“This was just terrible and I have been devastated by it,” Pompan said.

Others could relate.

In Topanga Canyon, the floods were a disaster deja vu for Neil Stratton. Just months ago, his canyon home was destroyed by a brush fire. On Tuesday, his furniture workshop--next to where the house once stood--was inundated by water and debris.

Facing a Jan. 20 deadline for a San Francisco furniture show, he said, “I’m working in mud. I’m working on a brown floor instead of a white floor today.”

And just getting there, he said, was a chore. Roughly midway through the 12-mile canyon, just south of the Topanga village center, a section of Topanga Canyon Boulevard had crumbled, leaving no way through from Pacific Coast Highway. The road remained open only from the north.

“Now I live in Santa Monica,” Stratton said. “I took the 10 to the 405 to the 101 and came all the way around, to Old Topanga (Canyon Road), at 5 this morning, because I knew there was no other way I’d make it.”

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said he would urge Gov. Pete Wilson to give repair of Topanga Canyon Boulevard--California 27--the same priority that state highway officials gave shattered interstates after last January’s earthquake.

Gary Jensen and his wife, Lucy, said they were ready for whatever the weather brings next. “I’ve lived up here 22 years, so we’re prepared,” the Topanga resident said. “We have a lot of beer in the fridge.”

A few miles away in the secluded hamlet of Malibou Lake, the water had receded and the lake was calm again as residents began the familiar ritual of cleaning up the mess. Clad in knee-high rain boots, armed with shovels and garden hoses, they sloshed through muddy living rooms and driveways, salvaging what they could.

“This was a bedroom,” Don Bethe said, walking through a muddy room on the first level of his home. “Outside the water was high as the window. . . . We pulled the rugs out this morning.”

Bethe, whose home sits immediately beside the lake, has seen it all before. The layers of mud on the patio and walkway outside. The soggy insides. The rushing angry waters. In 1992, his home also flooded. Back then, he tore out the floor and built a new one.

This time, he said, it will be much of the same: “It’s really depressing; all the flooring has to come up.”

As bad as it was, it could have been worse.

Before the flood, Bethe, his wife, Barbara, and their neighbor removed clothes and other items from the first-floor bedroom and stored them upstairs. Using rope, they hung the furniture from the ceiling on hooks attached to beams. Near the window, a trunk was suspended from the ceiling. On the other side of the room, a bed, a dresser and a small desk hung in the same way.

In Glendale, half a dozen homes fell victim Wednesday to mudslides. At one, Jane Novitski was left to ponder the cosmic ramifications of having been prudent--but to no avail. Heeding those who said planting on a hillside would slow or stop erosion, she covered the 80-foot slope behind her home with trees and a rock garden, complete with railroad ties.

“It all came crashing down at about 8:20 this morning,” Novitski said Wednesday. “It just didn’t work. The whole hill came down.”

No one was hurt at her home.

Times staff writers Alan Abrahamson, Sharon Bernstein, Aaron Curtiss, Chip Johnson, Myron Levin, Beth Shuster and correspondent Steve Ryfle contributed to this story.