Storm Sends Some in Malibu Over the Edge

Even disaster veterans get the blues.

After nearly being washed away by a torrent of water, after seeing his dream seaside cottage swamped in mud, after listening to his beloved Mercedes choke on rain, Ken Scopp admitted that he is fed up with life in Malibu.

“I’ve had enough,” he said Saturday morning. “I’ve hit the limit. It’s time to move. As soon as we can fix it up, we will sell,” said Scopp, who has survived three other floods and a brush fire in the seven years at his beachfront home.

Scopp was not alone in expressing last-straw sentiments in soggy, tired Malibu, where dozens of homeowners along Pacific Coast Highway spent a harrowing night Friday unsuccessfully trying to fend off the latest flooding in the disaster-prone community.

Despite frantic sandbagging, dozens of homes were flooded along the 3 1/2-mile section of California 1 between Tuna and Las Flores canyons. Four canyon creeks along that stretch washed over their banks, then across the four-lane road and flowed right through the front doors of million-dollar homes and beach shanties.

Garage doors were blown off their hinges, decks collapsed to the sandy beach below, chunks of foundation gave way and exterior gates were crushed under the weight of sludge. The highway was littered with BMWs, Mercedes and Jeeps that had washed from their driveways. Some vehicles were suspended atop islands of tree trunks and roots that looked like piles of beach driftwood.

Cleanup was slowed by the closure of Pacific Coast Highway, which was entirely covered by rocks, mud, tree trunks and debris at the base of Pena Canyon. A giant backhoe, skip-loaders and dump trucks were making slow progress cutting into a 25-foot-high, 100-yard-long mound of muck Saturday.

It seems likely that the main coastal artery will remain closed to all but emergency vehicles from Topanga Canyon Road to Las Flores Canyon Boulevard, at least through Monday. “We are trying to get one lane punched through,” said Ed Lassak, a private contractor hired by the county. “But I doubt we’ll have it all clear by Monday. There is just too much here.”

All canyon roads in the Malibu area are closed to non-residents with the exception of Kanan Dume Road. Other closures include Malibu Canyon Road, Latigo Canyon Road and Encinal Canyon Road. Caltrans spokesmen said all are expected to remain impassable until at least Monday.

Scopp said his wife, Karen, was asleep and he was dozing just before midnight when he decided to check the patio drains one last time. As he worked with a shovel to clear debris, an outer door onto the highway ripped from its hinges--pushed by a wall of water and tree stumps.

The door pinned Scopp, an insurance agent, against his front door, forcing him to scramble in through a bathroom window to safety. He woke his wife and the two fled over the roof to the outside.

“The storms can be kind of thrilling usually, the waves crashing below and the sound of the rain, but this was very frightening,” Karen Scopp said. “It was like we were trapped between the mountains and the ocean. This was not fun. It was very frightening.”

Tracy Perusse, 30, was asleep on the couch in her apartment at the base of Big Rock Drive and PCH about 11 p.m. Friday when she heard what sounded like a roaring river outside. By the time she called 911, an eight-foot wooden flood wall surrounding the apartment house had collapsed beneath a torrent of mud and water. Perusse climbed to the building’s roof, joining two neighbors. Minutes later, the sludge ripped through her apartment.

“It was horrifying,” said Perusse, who was waiting Saturday for a tow truck to dislodge her car, which had washed several houses down from its parking place. “If I’d been in my bedroom, I’d be dead. The whole thing fell into the ocean. We tried to get onto our next-door neighbor’s roof but we couldn’t make it. Once the water receded, we formed a human chain and helped each other down to the road. We called 911 twice but no one ever came.”

The four-unit apartment building where Perusse lived was hit for the second time in two years. Last year, another unit lost its bedroom in a mudflow that ripped the bottom floor room from the rest of the building.

The building’s owner, Barry McManus, who said he had no problems until the 1993 fire denuded the hillsides above his property, questions whether he should keep the place.

“I never thought in a thousand years this would happen again,” said a stunned McManus, who put in a drain and built the flood wall to prevent damage from mudflows. “I don’t know if I can keep this place.”

Like McManus, who lived in Malibu for many years before renting his property, some veteran residents are thinking about making this storm their last.

“I’ve had it,” said Carol Hundley, whose 16-year-old custom-built house filled with about three feet of mud during Friday’s storm. “I’m sorry. This is beyond a mess. This El Nino has done us in.”

Robert and Sally Ritter, owners of a print shop, had the consolation of knowing that they are just renting the two-story beach house where they were shoveling mud Saturday. At the end of the month they are scheduled to return to their Northridge home, which has been under construction for nearly a year to repair damage from the 1994 earthquake.

“My sister in New York says, ‘How can you live with all of that,’ ” said Robert Ritter, standing barefoot in the brown sludge. “But everywhere you live there is something. You just have to suck it up.”

Times staff writer Laura A. Galloway contributed to this story.