Malibu’s Lure Washes Away for Some

In Malibu, some were shoveling out. Others were shoving off.

“I’m staying. It’s really beautiful here,� Sharon Sandler said as she tugged at a garden rake to clean the mud from her beachfront living room.

“I’m leaving. This place is a mess. This area’s unsafe,� Carol Stoinski said as she lugged a trash bag filled with her clothes through the thick ooze that poured through her front door.

Until Monday’s mountain of mud clouded everything, the two neighbors on Pacific Coast Highway had shared an ocean view and a sunny outlook on life at the beach.

There were spectacular sunsets. Bracing sea breezes. Relaxing walks on the sand. The sight of red-tailed hawks circling over Piedro Gorda Canyon above their row of homes built on stilts at the surf line.

But last October’s fire had burned away brush in the canyon. And rains pounding the blackened slopes sent a torrent of mud, water and debris roaring down Big Rock Drive, over the highway and through their front doors.

So Tuesday was a time of reassessment in the 19800 block of PCH.

“I’ll stay. I’d rather dodge boulders falling up here than bullets flying in the city,� said Tommy Bartee, a 40-year-old movie extra who was dragging chunks of logs and tree branches from the mud in front of a friend’s apartment.

“This is paradise. I’m not leaving,� said retiree Sid Jacobson, 73. “I wouldn’t have left during the flood, except that the firemen and sheriff made me. They carried me and the dog out in a skip-loader.�

That was Monday afternoon. On Tuesday, Jacobson and his poodle named Boy needed rescuing again. Jacobson took a wrong step--apparently into a hole hidden by the mud--and soon was up to his waist in muck. It took three onlookers to drag him out.

Even that close call did not change Jacobson’s outlook, but others seemed ready to wave goodby to paradise as quickly as they could dig their cars out of mud-sealed garages.

“I’m going to find a new place,� said James Prescott, a 38-year-old water-filter business owner for whom the flood was a third strike.

Prescott said his home on Rambla Pacifica burned in the October fire. Then he moved into a house owned by friends, but had to move after the Jan. 17 earthquake--when its owners offered the place to other friends left homeless by the temblor. Prescott ended up on Pacific Coast Highway when another friend let him house-sit there.

“Landowners beware: Don’t rent to me!� joked Prescott as he wiped mud from his face.

Howard Benner was ready for a change too.

“I lost my TV, the VCR, my bed, my computer, most of my books,� the 24-year-old USC economics student said.

“I was at USC for the riots. I moved here a year ago--that was a stupid move. I was here for the fire. After the earthquake closed the freeway, it started taking me an hour to drive to class, not 20 minutes like before. I should have stayed Downtown with the gunshots.�

Stoinski, a 24-year-old legal assistant, said she planned to immediately hunt for a new place to live. She moved to Malibu a few months ago to live at the beach, a place where her dogs--an Australian shepherd named Bo and a Samoyed named Pasha--could run.

On Monday, she had to beg sheriff’s deputies to rescue the dogs when the flood hit while she was at work.

“I moved here after the fires, thinking what could happen after that,� Stoinski said. “Then the earthquake hit and I thought we might fall right into the ocean. Now this. What’s next? A tsunami?�

Stoinski said she salvaged few clothes or other belongings from the mud.

“It’s not just a matter of washing them: I can’t find them. I should probably sit on the beach and wait for stuff to wash up. It’s gone.�

A few doors down, Sandler was more optimistic--even though the flood washed away her entire bedroom.

The room was built into the stilt supports beneath the main structure. Mud and water pouring down the living room stairs ripped the room loose and sent it tumbling into the surf, where it was pounded to bits by the waves.

“Everything that was down there is gone, paintings, sculpture, the bed, everything,� the 31-year-old lawyer said. But she managed a grin as she watched friend Paul Steinberg, 33, shovel muck down the stairway opening and onto the rocks below.

Everything on the top floor was muddy, including her French sofas and the shelf of books containing a numbered, turn-of-the-century collection of British volumes that Steinberg had given her about “the romance of crime.�

“It doesn’t look very romantic now,� shrugged the barefoot Steinberg, who is a special events designer.

By day’s end, things were returning to normal in the 19800 block.

Caltrans crews were bulldozing up the last of the mud and depositing it down the street, next to the beach. Other workers were hosing down the pavement and picking debris from drains near Big Rock Drive.

The state’s top disaster official, Office of Emergency Services chief Richard Andrews, stopped by to check on the progress. He reminded victims that they can qualify for emergency assistance under the disaster declaration that followed the October fires.

Sometimes, Andrews admitted, it seems as if the only thing that has not happened to California is a volcanic eruption. Never in the history of the state have so many disasters occurred one after another, he said. And never in the history of the nation, he noted, has one state gained so much experience in dealing with calamity.

“Jeez,� he added wearily, “we’ve had enough practice.�