Malibu Home Declared Unsafe After Collapse

Sharon Gibson’s neighbor Melvin Seeman first heard water running Saturday about noon.

“I looked outside, and I saw lots of water coming out of the bottom of her house,” he said.

A half-century-old, four-inch Malibu water main had burst under a corner of Gibson’s rented home on the scenic Paseo Serra cul-de-sac.

When Seeman ran next door to let her know, she was in a part of the house away from the break and unaware of the problem.

“I called the Fire Department, and firemen were here within minutes,” Gibson said Sunday. “They were great. Within minutes, they carried all my furniture outside onto the street.”

It was fortunate for Gibson that they did because about 2:30 p.m. a corner of the undermined house, containing its fireplace, and two palm trees just outside broke away and crashed down a 200-foot-deep ravine toward Pacific Coast Highway.

The house, where Gibson had lived for about a year, was red-tagged and declared unsafe to occupy.

“I was trying all afternoon long to reach the water department, but I couldn’t get anything but a recorded number,” said Gibson. “It was four hours before that department arrived, and then it took another two hours before they could locate the point of rupture and shut off the water.”

But, Gibson was still thankful Sunday. “I’m alive, and thank goodness I have a wonderful family--my son and daughter-in-law and two grandchildren--to live with,” she said. “And they’re not far away.”

Gibson’s neighborhood appears precariously perched above the coast, but Seeman and his wife, who have lived in their home for 42 years, said there have been no slides in the immediate vicinity.

Seeman said a bigger water main was installed after a brush fire burned several homes nearby in 1993. But it was an older main that burst Saturday.

Contractors worked Sunday excavating the pipe outside the Gibson and Seeman homes, trying to find the point of breakage.

The Seemans remained in their home because it suffered no damage, but Gibson’s house will not be ready for occupancy for several months, she said.