Publisher’s Notebook

• Reining in the Rain in Malibu •

ANNE SOBLE

This week’s rainstorm rumbled in like an aged and overloaded freight train on Tuesday a little after 4 a.m. at my home in western Malibu. The volatile weather front audibly clashed with the air in the upper atmosphere and the Pacific-driven front won out, slowly but steadily bringing with it the first rainfall experienced in what seems like an eternity to most Malibuites.
Even if this wasn’t the third year of a major drought, the earliest October storm in a half-century brought welcome relief to the parched local terrain. Still, no one in Malibu could help but greet the rain’s arrival with conflicted feelings because of the knowledge that if the rainfall is too intense for too long, homes and lives in the recent wildfire zones are in jeopardy.
Those of us who were in the same position after the 1993 fires know what this means all too well. Outstanding firefighters used acreage behind my corrals for backfires that saved the barns and other structures but stripped the area clean. That coupled with the denuded terrain in the watershed above meant that when the first rains came, the creek became a raging river that ripped up creek crossings, foliage, irrigation lines and anything else along the banks that got in its way.
Whole trees navigated out to sea. Huge boulders leapfrogged in the churning waters. A momentary fear that a curious dog had gotten too close to the water’s edge and been swept away proved unfounded, but the experience was still such that the dog remained forever wary of running groundwater, even when the creek returned to its normal meandering self.
Even without a recent denuding of our own hillsides, Malibuites are reminded that these earliest rains will loosen canyon wall rocks and root systems and make local driving all the more hazardous. This calls for caution above and beyond what is usually required since many Southlanders seem unable or unwilling to alter their driving patterns when roads are slick.
Even before the heaviest downpours took place midweek, there were already close to 1000 rain-related traffic accidents in the county. If we all slow down, no one from Malibu will be included in these statistics. And remember to turn on headlights when windshield wipers are on—it’s state law. If we all can stay safe, the much needed rain will be welcomed rather than cursed as nature’s indifference to the human condition.