Several Corral Canyon residents during Monday’s City Council meeting blamed the city’s Solstice Creek restoration project for interfering with the fighting of this weekend’s fire and for slowing down the locals’ ability to evacuate. But city officials and Assistant Fire Chief Reggie Lee said Corral Canyon Road being reduced to one lane at the bottom was not the problem, but rather the only interference was from residents stopping their cars on the side of the road to observe the fire.
Corral Canyon resident Cynthia Benjamin described an evacuation scene of long lines because of the road’s reduction to one lane due to a project that is supposed to replenish the steelhead trout population.
“Everybody’s sitting there freaking out,” she said. “We had to stop and wait… We couldn’t go downhill.”
Realtor Beverly Taki, a local who heads the Corral Canyon Safety Committee, gave a verbal lashing to the City Council, demanding apologies for the lane reduction. She said the evacuations were also made more difficult because few things were followed from an evacuation plan that had been created by her committee, including the opening of the back gate of Beau Rivage Restaurant (which did not occur until 8 a.m., more than four hours after the fire sparked) and traveling through the mobile home park (which she and others said the residents had a difficult time doing because of a lack of cooperation from the mobile home residents) to access Pacific Coast Highway. She added that Sheriff’s deputies never arrived to help with the evacuations, and signs were supposed to have been put up to lead people to evacuation points, but never were. Taki also blasted fire officials for having her evacuate at 5:30 a.m., while fire engines did not arrive at her home until two hours later.
When Assistant Chief Lee was asked to respond to the criticisms from Benjamin and Taki, as well as from several other Corral Canyon residents, he said the reduction to one lane was not a problem for the firefighters or the evacuation. The noticeably angry Lee stared down Taki during his comments while she sat in the audience.
“The problem was … I saw a lot of the residents that were being evacuated pull over the side of the roads and watch the fire,” Lee said. “They were jamming the side of the road. If they had moved on down, we would have had plenty of room.”
He continued, “When we ask you to leave two hours ahead of time, it’s because we don’t want you to be there when our engines get there. We don’t want to be in a bottleneck … We understand that this is a disaster. We cannot protect every single home. That is not reasonable.”
Some of the council members added that since most of the people complaining were unincorporated county residents, they should take up their problems with the county government.
Taki said in an interview Tuesday afternoon the city leaders were insulting, and she added she had no idea what Lee was talking about regarding people stopping their cars on the side of the road.
“They say they don’t have to service us,” Taki said. “But that’s their road. I think there’s some liability there. The city was negligent to make a one-lane road during the fire season.”
Taki also said during the interview that she saw a public information officer from the Fire Department on television saying the lane reduction made the access to Corral Canyon Road difficult. And she said “if we go to court,” she would get a taped copy of those statements. When asked if this meant the homeowners planned to sue the city, she was not specific in her answer.
“They are protecting steelhead trout over humans,” she said. “We will take action how we feel is best for us.”
During Monday’s meeting, a few other complaints and suggestions came up regarding fire fighting. City Councilmember Ken Kearsley said many of the firefighters who entered his neighborhood, most not being from the area, did not know their way around. He suggested the Fire Department acquire GPS devices for the engines.
Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich said she thought it was a bad idea to make Agoura High School one of the evacuation shelters, because people would not go there, fearing having to travel through the canyons. She also said the condition of some of the fire engines and at least one fire station were poor, and offered to help raise money to increase the quality.
Longtime Malibu resident Marissa Coughlin also spoke about state properties with excessive brush, which fueled the fire.
“We don’t buy property we can’t manage, and I don’t think the government should either.”