It was standing room only at a community meeting last week held at Los Angeles County Fire Camp Station 8 on Rambla Pacifico Road to discuss the tremendous damage to area roads from recent storms. Residents, L.A. County firemen, California Highway Patrol officers, a County Supervisor Office representative and civic engineers from L.A. County’s Department of Public Works were all in attendance.
The wettest winter in 121 years has caused sinkholes, landslides and significant movement on many roads. At the community meeting on April 28, Dean Lehman, Public Works district engineer, Road Maintenance Division, led a PowerPoint presentation and discussion to explain to concerned residents how precarious ground movement in the area would be stabilized and repaired. He explained how weak marine sedimentary rocks mixed with extreme amounts of moisture from the storms caused a rapid uplift of canyons and roads, which were reportedly mostly built and graded in the 1920s, a time when advanced technology was not available.
“We’re experiencing things we don’t always experience” Lehman said. “We had a combination of a January minor El Niño, an Arctic blast and the Pineapple Express. We had 140 roads closed in the county. We had $83 million of damage to county roads and our annual budget is $80 million…
“Commute times were increased three times” he went on. “We may have to cancel ongoing projects in order to repair these roads.”
The areas discussed at the meeting are mostly all off Las Flores Canyon Road. The first one is on Las Flores itself where an outside lane completely fell into the northern side of the mountain, causing a 40-foot drop. A rail will be built there at a cost of more than $1.5 million and will be completed at the latest, by January 2006, Lehman said. In several areas, the road has been closed off to one lane only.
The second area is at Hume Road and Briarbluff Road where a hillside collapsed leaving a giant gaping hole and residents with only one way out and a much longer commute down to Pacific Coast Highway. Lehman explained that Hume Road is still moving so they can’t even get crews out to the area to measure what needs to be done until the mountain stabilizes.
“Probably late summer or early fall. It’s not safe for our staff,” Lehman said. “The good news is we believe that we can fix it.”
In the meantime, and before they actually assess the damage there, work will be done to connect Briarbluff to Hume so residents have another passage. Lehman explained how workers would insert a temporary hairpin turnaround road around one resident’s home. He said they should be able to have that road open to traffic within two months, “worst-case scenario, by August.”
The third problem discussed sits on Rambla Pacifico, north of Hume across from Lamplighter Lane. That problem is still being discussed among L.A. County and Malibu City officials. A fourth area at Schueren Road near Saddlepeak was discussed briefly enough to tell residents of four problems alone in that area, which will cause a one-month closure of Schueren Road when construction commences, probably in August.
Susan Cosentino, a longtime resident and Malibu business owner, lives just below the destruction zone on Hume Road near Castlewood Drive. She stood up to address the audience and said she wanted to dispel rumors circulating amongst neighbors.
“We have gotten calls and heard that people want to threaten us because we oppose Briarbluff being opened and that’s not true,” she said. “We even put a sign up for people to slow down and it was thrown over the side of the mountain. We’re just shocked, this is completely false.”
In a phone interview, Cosentino went on to say that her family is cooperating with the county and will do whatever it takes.
Other residents asked questions, mostly about logistics, timelines and personal concerns. One longtime resident who has an ill husband said she was worried about fire crews getting into the area in the event of an emergency. Another resident said someone nearly died recently because the ambulance got lost through all of the problem areas. Fire Chief Reginald Lee assured them that if someone has an emergency-for instance, a heart attack-the patient would be stabilized and driven down the hill or, if needed, they would be airlifted out of the area.
He said they [Camp 8] are not a working station, but during the period of construction, they will have trucks at the station and an ambulance at the ready.