Sun Shines as Malibu Digs Out : Storms: The latest round of flooding and mudslides leaves about 100 homes damaged. It is the city’s worst disaster since the 1993 wildfires.

Malibu floods. Malibu mops up. Malibu dries out.

A Sunday respite complete with enamel-blue skies, cottony clouds and balmy weather provided the quintessential beachy backdrop to the ritual cleanup after rains and floods created the worst disaster in Malibu since the 1993 wildfires.

About 100 houses had been socked in by mud piled up in driveways and garages. At least two dozen of those seaside homes were still filled with about three feet of sludge Sunday, but damage estimates were still unclear. This storm’s wallop, said city officials, was far worse than that of last year’s deluge, which damaged only one home.

“There is no comparison between this one and the February storm last year,” said Malibu city spokeswoman Sarah Maurice.

Experts have estimated that the hillsides denuded by the 1993 fire need at least four more years of growth before they can absorb much rainfall, Maurice added. The heavier-than-usual runoff and the flooding it created are “absolutely and definitely fire-related,” she said.

The series of storms dropped more than 3.5 inches of rain in many parts of Southern California since Thursday night, according to National Weather Service statistics. For example, a weather station at the coastal Point Mugu in Ventura County recorded a total of 3.59 inches, with 2.42 of it falling between 4 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Saturday. At the Civic Center in Downtown Los Angeles, the total was 3.69 inches since Thursday afternoon, with 3.33 inches on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Up and down Pacific Coast Highway on Sunday, residents and hired laborers shoveled, scraped, hosed and swept away at garages, driveways, patios and, in some cases, kitchens and living rooms. A couch, a motorcycle, mailboxes and dozens of mud-coated cars still littered the side of the highway, bogged where the water had left them.

Diehard joggers slapped the muddy road with their feet. Surfers whose houses were swamplands of mud postponed cleanups to pedal up the coast for some unusually good waves inspired by the storm. “We’ll clean up later,” shouted Scott Heller, whose house at the bottom of Las Flores Canyon Road was awash in mud. “I’m going surfing now.”

Companies specializing in disaster cleanup already had their vans in front of the worst-hit houses, pumping out water and trundling out sludge at a cost of about $7,000 per job.

Caltrans workers driving skip loaders, bulldozers and dump trucks circled the trouble spots, Pena and Tuna canyons and Big Rock Drive, hoping to clear the still-closed highway by Wednesday, Caltrans officials said. All canyon roads except Kanan Dume Road remain closed to anyone but residents.

Bert Forer and his wife, Lucille, were hosing down his garage, where only a smudge of mud remained near the couple’s Mercedes.

“Want to see what saved us?” Forer queried. He held up up a soggy two-by-four that he had wedged between the driveway floor and the bottom of the garage door.

Across from Tuna Canyon, where Tuna Creek had been transformed into a mud tsunami, 15 neighboring families pooled their money to lease a skip loader. For longtime resident Steven Olshan, who also hired 10 laborers, the gritty job took about 10 hours.

Gazing at his mailbox and trash cans, tossed up against the hillside across the street from his house, Olshan said: “What a difference a day makes. Emotionally and physically, I’m drained. We missed all the disasters last year. But I’m staying right here. I’m not moving.”

Olshan and others praised Caltrans workers for relentlessly scooping the mud from the highway throughout the storms. But a handful of residents along PCH at the mouth of Big Rock Drive criticized the state transportation workers, saying they had not kept watch at Big Rock, where a storm pipe and drain overflowed, shooting mud into about a dozen houses.

Property owner Barry McManus and a Caltrans worker got into a yelling match Friday night when, McManus said, the Caltrans worker driving a skip loader got rid of mud by dumping it through a massive hole in McManus’ foundation.

“There was nobody over there watching the storm pipe and drain,” said neighbor Karen Arthur. “Our neighbor was watching it and he yelled to us, “It’s overflowing, close your garage doors.’ The mud came up to our doorknobs. Those (expletives) didn’t show up to help us until 3:30 a.m.”

But Jim Hansen, Caltrans area superintendent since 1983, denies the charge. Hansen conceded that Caltrans workers may have lost their patience with the situation but said there were always at least six workers there throughout the storm.

“I think all (the Caltrans workers are) losing it down there,” Hansen said. “They are frustrated over having these walls of mud come down again and again over there. Our main concern on Friday night was getting through the mud blockade (at Pena Canyon) for firefighters and emergency workers. We have a good relationship with the majority of the people down there. I got only one complaint from one homeowner. We’re good neighbors to them, whether they realize it or not.”

Such a neighbor is Sid Jacobson, 74, who had nothing but praise for the Caltrans workers.

“Caltrans is great,” Jacobson said. “Who is complaining about them?” His condominium was covered in muddy paw prints after Boy, his over-excited terrier, had tracked sludge throughout the house. “I just wish they would give my maid a ride in here so she would clean up my place.”