Commentary: A brush with death in Silverado

I lived in Silverado Canyon with my mother between 1964 and the horrendous flood of early 1969.

In that flood, Silverado Canyon Road was washed out, and hundreds were stranded in the canyon without food, potable water or outside communications.

We had several feet of frontage land between our home and the creek, which included a dirt driveway that led to a bridge that crossed the creek. There was a large sycamore tree in front of a window in our living room. We had no idea the creek, which was by then a raging river, had eroded most of the frontage land until this sycamore tree disappeared before our eyes.

We went outside to find that only a few feet of land remained from the new edge of the creek and the front of our home. That’s when my mom decided we needed to evacuate.

The bridge had washed out, so we hiked downstream along the base of the hill behind our home until we came to a neighbor’s house with an intact bridge across the creek. TV and phone service were out, but we somehow learned that the fire hall was a designated evacuation center. It had cots, sleeping bags, hot food and water for the evacuees.

We spent the night, and the next morning left the firehouse to check on our house. It was just hours before a mudslide occurred and took out the fire station. Had the slide happened that previous night, we would have been buried. Several friends died or were seriously injured during the slide.

Our home was severely undermined by erosion and not safely habitable. We then learned of the mudslide at the station and that we couldn’t return there. We made our way to a neighbor’s home on higher ground.

I think of those experiences whenever I hear of flash flooding in Silverado or Modjeska. Unless you’ve witnessed it firsthand, it’s hard to comprehend the destructive power of uncontrolled water, which rips up and takes away every obstacle in its path.

We lost several 100-year-old oak trees that shaded our house, some of which ended up skewering homes downstream like toothpicks through an olive.

The Los Angeles Times, in a story about the 1969 flooding written in 1989, said cars and houses had floated down the canyon for three days. It said five people were killed and 17 injured in the mudslide.

After a few days, we were rescued by Marines in helicopters and taken to Irvine Lake. From there, we were bused to El Modena High School to be aided by the Red Cross and met by relatives or friends.

My mom and I never again lived in the canyon; the memories of the flood were just too painful. After repairing our home, my mom eventually sold it.

Few people who survived that event still live in the canyon, and thus there is little institutional memory of what happened 47 years ago. And even though the Times article points to safeguards that have been put in place since 1969, those living there now still need to beware of the heavy rains coming later this month and in February, and have an evacuation plan in case serious flooding recurs.

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WILBURN SMITH is a lawyer who lives and practices in Laguna Niguel. He was 13 at the time of the deadly flooding in Orange County in 1969.