Editor’s note: This the first in a series of stories we will be publishing about the Rambla Pacifico road. Access to the road was closed after landslides began in 1978. The lack of evacuation and emergency routes worry residents as the fire season looms.
By Ward Lauren / Special to The Malibu Times
The future of Rambla Pacifico began in a downhill slide in 1978.
Its fall has continued, literally, ever since through successive landslides, road closures and the most destructive firestorm in local history to the point, some say, that it is the most complex and contentious public works issue facing Malibu today.
Beginning at Pacific Coast Highway immediately west of Las Flores Canyon, Rambla Pacifico originally led to the top of the bluffs adjacent to the La Costa subdivision. However, as the slides on the hillside next to Las Flores Canyon Creek continued, they finally, in 1984, undermined part of the road itself. This was then county property, prior to the incorporation of Malibu as a city. The slide led to a half-mile loop of the lower portion of Rambla Pacifico being closed, as it has remained ever since.
To get to their homes from Pacific Coast Highway, residents of upper Rambla Pacifico must drive more than five miles up Las Flores Canyon Road to Hume Drive, then backtrack to the southwest uphill and drive down to their now-disconnected portion of the street. The former three- to four-minute drive now takes 15 to 20 minutes-if the weather’s good. And, further complicating matters, is the slide that took away a huge section of Hume Drive after heavy rains two years ago.
Residents in the area say they fear for their lives and the safety of their property should an emergency, such as another firestorm, occur.
The 1993 fire that burned three days and destroyed a total of 268 houses, about 130 of them on the mountainside west of Las Flores Canyon, give credence to those fears.
Rambla Pacifico homeowners Joe and Barbara Yarman remember it all too vividly.
“When we finally evacuated and drove through the smoke and flames to get out, we made it to the top near Fire station 8, where dozens of fire trucks were parked and firemen just standing around,” they wrote in a recent letter to The Malibu Times. “Curious and a bit angry, we asked them why they weren’t trying to save some of the homes we saw burning and soon maybe our own. “They said they had been told there was no way out, that Rambla Pacifico was a dead-end and they couldn’t risk equipment and men.”
Residents in the area have for years been lobbying the city to do something-either reopen the road, or build a new one.
In 1995, Malibu city officials sought help from the federal government. The Federal Emergency Management Agency indicated it might fund an extensive $22 million project to stabilize the hillside and reopen Rambla Pacifico. Plans were made but FEMA later shelved the program. This put the onus, and the expense, back onto the city, which defines the current complexity of the situation.
“For the city to open up Rambla Pacifico as a public road, would require rebuilding that hill,” said Mayor Ken Kearsley in an interview with The Malibu Times. “And, like the county, we don’t have the money to pay for that. If we had the money it would be done tomorrow.”
The residents did propose helping to fund such an endeavor.
“The homeowners have gotten together and contributed to a fund to build a private road,” Kearsley said. “It does not have to be built to the same public safety standards that we have to follow, and can go around the slide.”
City Attorney Christi Hogin explained that the city can only build roads that meet certain public safety standards such as size of turnarounds and width.
“The homeowners’ proposed road wouldn’t be built to our required standards,” she said, “but could be built with sufficient safety standards to accommodate the area at least for limited regular traffic, and certainly for an evacuation route, possibly for a fire access route. So their proposal is a good thing for the safety of the neighborhood, for its convenience, and is one that the city is supportive of.”
However, that proposal was made long ago, and there is still no road. “The city seemed to think it was a great idea and would try to help us in every way possible,” the Yarmans said in their letter. “How long ago was that? Maybe nine, 10 years! Why isn’t the city aggressively assisting our group in achieving the goal for a safe access to our homes?”
“We are aggressively assisting their group,” Kearsley said in response to the Yarmans’ letter. “Our attorney has been talking to their attorney; we’ve had innumerable meetings; we’ve used our public engineering staff to help them; we’ve given them $40,000 to help pay for their engineering studies.”
Exasperated residents of upper Rambla Pacifico in 1999 had asked the city council to initiate eminent domain proceedings for the piece of land they sought for an easement for their private road.
“The city cannot condemn property and give it to private individuals, it has to be for the public good,” Kearsley said. “We’re eager to rebuild the old road to the base of the slide, at which point it would meet the private road that they want to build. We have been actively pursuing that.
“My big fear,” Kearsley continued, “and everybody’s fear, is that we’ll get a Santa Ana and the same thing will happen as in ’93, a big fire, and we won’t get those people out of there. I wake up at night worrying about what’s going to happen up there. It’s a vale of tears.”