Canyon Aches

In Canyon Acres, people found what they describe as a storybook neighborhood come to life.

There are hills to explore, paths to bike, neighbors willing to loan two eggs or a cup of sugar. Kids play in the nooks and crannies and gullies of the unpaved roadsides off Laguna Canyon Road. Dogs wander freely, tails wagging. And through one of the open front doors come the strains of someone practicing the piano, a 12-bar boogie-woogie in homage to life in a fine neighborhood.

“We have hawks and deer, and people are friendly and close,” 13-year resident Marilyn Smart said Tuesday. “When the sun’s out, there’s nothing like Canyon Acres. It’s like our Malibu.”

Hard to believe disasters happen here.

When the hillsides that surround the cluster of several dozen houses of mixed ages and styles began giving way Tuesday morning, life suddenly became nightmarish. Residents described the roaring sound of sliding mud, the crackle and crunch of trees and branches giving way and the crashing of glass and the buckling of house walls.

Firefighters said three houses were destroyed. Five others appeared damaged by mud and water and dozens of denizens were digging through mud to find cars, driveways, yards and patios, hoping to keep still-flowing water from threatening them.

Hard times are familiar to Canyon Acres, a community that has not yet recovered from its last calamity, the firestorm of 1993, when more than half of the area’s houses burned. Unlike other neighborhoods in Laguna Beach where flames damaged or destroyed more than 400 houses, the recovery in Canyon Acres has been slow and remains incomplete.

Such a double-barreled catastrophe might be enough to make people reconsider living here. But much of the talk in the muddy sunshine of Tuesday was not about leaving, but staying.

“We’ve been beaten so badly, so very badly,” said Artemio Sepulveda, who was checking the damage at the house where his wife and children have lived through first a fire then a pair of floods on Canyon Acres Drive.

His family fled when the two-story house across the street collapsed and was shoved forward by mud falling as much as 300 feet down the steep hillside.

But over a window facing the street, his son Demetrio has painted a hopeful motto: “And little birdies will sing again. . . .”

Still, some who made narrow escapes are wondering whether their survival might not be a message to go somewhere else.

“My husband is in town talking to a Realtor now,” said Mary Gonzales, surveying the neighborhood’s condition with son Zachary, 11.

“My car suffered $500 in damage from the flood two weeks ago,” she said, pointing at her red 1973 Volkswagen. “Now look--it’s buried. The cliff came down on it.”

Inside their one-story house, beyond the yellow tag nailed up by firefighters allowing only “limited access” to the property, Gonzales noticed the mud was slowly toppling the home’s rear wall. In the front, a small angel statue and a round stone bearing the word “dream” stood undisturbed, for now.

“It’s so beautiful here,” she said, looking down a street covered by thousands of yards of mud from the adjacent hills. “It is a great neighborhood. Great for families. It’s a small community, like Laguna, but closer, friendlier.

“I don’t know what they’re going to do with this poor place, maybe flatten everything and call it a park.”

Sitting on his porch Tuesday, 70-year-old Virgil Blacketer watched as his neighbors shoveled away mud and as crews with dump trucks and bulldozers tried to restore access to streets and driveways.

He and his brother both lost their houses in the 1993 fires. “All that was standing here was a washing machine and a water heater,” he said. This time, they both were spared.

After 60 years in Canyon Acres, the decision on what to do next isn’t difficult.

“This is home,” he said. “We’re staying.”

Robert Ourlian can be reached at (714) 248-2150 or by e-mail at robert.ourlian@latimes.com