Reports Flood In

A new emergency warning system in Topanga Canyon was activated Monday with a glance out a cabin window--and a glance at a computer screen.

The view of roiling Topanga Creek rushing a few feet beneath the window of Gary Meyer’s tiny home was scary enough.

But the list of rockslides, road closures and assorted close calls that he was flashing onto the Internet from the cabin’s computer was downright frightening.

“Topanga Cyn Blvd CLOSED both directions at ‘S’ curves” because of falling boulders, Meyer warned at 7:30 a.m.

A propane truck driver was trapped by live power lines that fell onto his rig along Entrado Drive, he reported in a 12:10 p.m. update.

Creek water was within 6 inches of inundating the Oak Drive bridge on Old Topanga Canyon Road and parents were being urged to pick up their children at Calmont School, he advised canyon residents in a 12:30 p.m. entry.

The news flashes, compiled from information provided by Caltrans, sheriff’s and fire officials and by canyon tipsters, are collected by the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness. And on Monday, damage reports were coming almost as fast as the rain that was pouring on the isolated mountain canyon between Malibu and the San Fernando Valley.

An outgrowth of the 1993 Calabasas brush fire and the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the Topanga coalition has dispensed disaster advisories in the past through a telephone warning system.

The coalition’s new Internet advisory service was getting its feet wet Monday in a big way.

“We’re on the high side of the creek, fortunately,” said Meyer, a 42-year-old documentary film producer who has lived in Topanga for 16 years and runs a World Wide Web site about the canyon (www.topangaonline.com)

“We’ll be OK as long as the water doesn’t start going around that tree,” added his wife and film partner, Patric Hedlund--pointing out the window toward a sycamore on the verge of being lapped.

The couple were briefly trapped in their house in 1992 when three tons of mud oozed down the mountainside and blocked their front door, said Hedlund, 41. Within minutes, neighbors and strangers had mobilized to dig the pair out, she added.

That same sort of neighborliness and self-reliance set Topanga Canyon’s emergency coalition in gear, said its chairwoman, Pat MacNeil.

The emergency team is made up of members of Topanga’s long-established Arson Watch patrol, along with a newly trained disaster response group, volunteers who can rescue horses and pets from the path of fire or flood and workers equipped to open an emergency Red Cross shelter at a moment’s notice.

The coalition also includes licensed radio operators, damage assessment experts and a team being trained to assist the elderly and disabled during emergencies, said MacNeil, a 58-year-old former travel agent who has lived in the canyon for two decades.

The debut of the Internet advisory service earlier this month has been welcomed by canyon residents who tap into it to find road conditions before leaving work. Notes of thanks have been e-mailed to the Web site from former canyon residents now living in Texas, Delaware and--in one case--Malaysia.

On Monday, coalition volunteers spent more than 15 hours on duty in a hilltop trailer near the center of the canyon that is outfitted with seven phone lines, a bank of two-way radios and walls covered with quickly changing status boards.

Lawyer Alli Acker, 36, a lifelong canyon resident, answered calls to the disaster hotline ([310] 455-3000) along with Debra Norman, 41, a registered nurse, and Fred Feer, a 61-year-old business consultant.

The trio listed streets blocked by mudflows and fallen rocks, culverts filled beyond capacity and canyon bridges threatened by rising water. The status boards also told which schools were closed and where sandbags were available.

MacNeil said residents of the unincorporated canyon area decided to organize their own disaster headquarters in the wake of the 1993 brush fire after noticing that Los Angeles, Malibu, Calabasas and Agoura Hills all had city-run emergency centers but they didn’t.

A $20,000 grant from Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky got things going. A yearly September community concert raises the $11,000 needed annually for supplies and phone bills, she said.

MacNeil and her husband, surveyor John MacNeil, donate the $300 required to keep the emergency information page on the Internet for a year. On Monday, she made certain that a steady stream of late developments flowed toward Meyer and Hedlund and their cabin computer terminal.

That wasn’t the only stream flow on Meyer’s mind as the rain pounded the pair’s cabin roof and he pounded out reports on his keyboard, however.

Topanga Canyon Boulevard was awash with mud and water at Robinson Road by about 4:30 p.m., and authorities were escorting motorists past rocks and debris at the ocean end of the canyon, according to the Web site.

At 5 p.m. Meyer replaced a sunny picture of two raccoons that usually serves as the logo for the site with a digital photograph of Topanga Creek, taken from his front door, showing water encircling the sycamore tree that he and Hedlund use as a safety gauge. Their narrow lane, Happy Trail, was covered by the flooding creek.

“If we have to evacuate, we’ll put a note on the Web page,” Meyer said.

And take a laptop with them to report on today’s canyon closures.