Council Votes to Repair Road; Site of 7 Deaths

After paying $1.6 million over the past two decades to settle three wrongful death lawsuits for accidents on a flooded stretch of La Tuna Canyon Road, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to spend $130,000 to fix the road’s faulty drainage blamed for causing the accidents.

The unanimous vote came nine months after Councilman Joel Wachs called for the repairs in response to a story in The Times that chronicled the seven deaths and 30 accidents on that road over the past 20 years.

“Frankly, the way things go in the city, this is fast,” Wachs said after the vote. “Hopefully, we will be able to complete the work before the next major rains take place.”

City engineers say they have not been sitting idle for nine months but have completed surveys and engineering studies on the work needed for the job.

“Our feelings are that this is actually a pretty good record,” City Engineer Sam Furuta said. “It means we have accelerated the project.”

Due to the urgency of the problem, Furuta said a contractor can be hired almost immediately. But he was unsure how quickly the work can be completed.

The three wrongful death suits, for accidents during rainstorms in 1979, 1987 and 1994, alleged that water pools on the roadway near Elben Avenue, west of the Foothill Freeway, caused cars to hydroplane and motorists to lose control.

City engineers have said that two or three spillways had been washed away by past mudslides or were paved over. But they have insisted that the overall problem on that road has been excessive speeding, not flooding.

In February, the council paid $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of Rafeek Teraberanyans, a 34-year-old mechanic killed in a head-on collision March 24, 1994.

In that case, a trash truck owned by Browning-Ferris Industries lost traction on a flooded stretch of road, causing it to slide into the path of Teraberanyans’ car.

The city paid an additional $450,000 to settle two other wrongful death suits.

The city has yet to settle the latest lawsuit, filed in January by Stormy Livendale, a 26-year-old Glendale woman who said she lost control of her car on the same stretch of flooded roadway, causing another car to hit her from behind.

Livendale’s lawsuit says she suffered brain damage in the Jan. 3, 1995, accident. But the suit does not specify an amount of money she seeks from the city. She is also suing the manufacturer of her car, contending a faulty seat contributed to her injuries.

“She alleges that the water caused her to lose control,” Assistant City Atty. Philip Sugar said. “But how much the seat failure contributed to her injuries, we don’t know. There are a lot of technical and legal issues.”

In total, four other deaths and 30 accidents have occurred during rainstorms on La Tuna Canyon Road, according to a city report to the council.

After a Times article chronicled the deaths in February, Wachs instructed city engineers to make the repairs as fast as possible.

But it wasn’t until last week that the Board of Public Works issued a “declaration of urgent necessity” to hire a contractor to fix the drainage problem.

In a report to Wachs, former City Engineer Robert Horii said the $130,000 will pay to improve the drainage problem at the accident site.

“Obviously, something must be done to protect public safety and eliminate city liability at this location as soon as possible,” the report said.

The Engineering Department also recommended a long-term study of drainage problems along the entire three-mile stretch of La Tuna Canyon Road west of the Foothill Freeway.