Encino Home Suffers El Nino-Like Flood

Jean Warner awoke early Thursday to the roar of what sounded like a storm and figured the sandbags she and her husband had piled around their Encino backyard would serve their purpose--protecting against El Nino storms.

But the storm was actually a 20-foot geyser spraying from a broken 36-inch water main, the primary source of water for her Encino community.

“We’ve been through El Nino before and this was worse,” she said. “I am so angry I could scream.”

No one else in the hillside neighborhood suffered any damage, and water service was uninterrupted, except for some low pressure in the morning, said Debra Sass, a spokeswoman for the Department of Water and Power.

The Warners, who had yet to receive an estimated cost of their damage, have lived in their Encino Avenue home for almost 20 years. The property is just below the Encino Reservoir.

They said they remembered how the 1982-83 El Nino flooded their backyard. So this year, they placed sandbags around the pool and tennis court on the west side of the house since storms traditionally have flooded their backyard from the east.

Thursday, however, the gush shot from the west--just across the fence on a slice of county land. The impact and subsequent flood flattened plants and at least one small tree, smeared mud on the pool and tennis court, and damaged antique furniture stored in portable sheds.

Most of the sandbags ended up at the bottom of the pool, swept over the edge by the force of the sewer water.

“It was like a typhoon or a hurricane,” Warner said Thursday morning, helping DWP crews wash off some of the mess.

The pipe, running from the dam to Ventura Boulevard, was installed in 1921, eight years before the Warners’ house was built, according to DWP officials.

It has had at least two other leaks in the section at the Warners’ property, according to the agency. At least one repair occurred in 1965 when a cement lining was added to the section where Thursday’s break occurred.

The pipe broke just after 1 a.m., Warner said. When she first walked outside to look at what she thought was a rainstorm, she thought the dam had broken.

Repair of the pipe was expected to take most of the day but be finished by today, said Cecilia Weldon, the agency’s manager of construction.

Warner complained that the pipe had broken three times before and should be replaced altogether.

“They’re going to wait until somebody dies,” she said. “If somebody had been there when it happened, I promise you, they would be dead.”

But DWP workers said their repair would be adequate. Workers planned to weld a thick piece of steel onto the fracture--a normal repair that can extend the life of a pipe for up to 15 years, said Fred Barker, an engineer.

Warner, however, surveyed her losses--primarily damage to her landscaping.

“I used to have a pretty yard,” she said.