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Updated Feb 18th, 2010
Rebuilding After
Mudslide
is
Daunting Task
By ERIC NOLAND
The Outlook
The culprits were lurking in a
corner of the room. They were fuzzy
black spots speckling the plaster
wall in a corner of Ted and Terri
Dearman’s home at the top of Ocean
View Boulevard. They began to
appear about the time the last shovelful
of mud was pitched out of the
house.
Mold.
La Cañada Flintridge residents
who survived the harrowing river of
mud and debris that tumbled out of
the mountains before dawn on Feb.
6 are now facing fresh challenges:
digging out, drying up and rebuilding.
And according to contractors
who do the work, reconstruction
after a flood or a mudslide presents
unique perils.
“After you remove the mud, you
open up the walls (break up the
plaster board, or drywall) and
remove insulation. You remove wet
material and start drying up the
structures,” said Anthony Moufarrege, owner of Servpro in
Arcadia, a company that specializes
in restoration of property damaged
by fire or flood. “Wood framing
takes a long time to dry up. If you
close the walls (nail up new plaster
board) before the moisture in the
wood is 15% or less, you’re going to
have a problem with mold in the
future. It traps moisture in there, and
moisture is like food for the mold. It
starts growing.”
It should be noted that Servpro
crews working in mudslide neighborhoods here have found wood will
have a moisture rating of 40-50%.
Dearman, who has been working
with WLS Construction of La
Cañada Flintridge, said of the mold,
“I want to get it out of the house. I
don’t want to have health issues with
the kids later on.”
He is already far along in the
effort. The house, which is just
around the corner from Manistee
Drive — ground zero for that raging
debris flow — had 10 inches of mud
and 2½ feet of water inside when the
flood receded. Dearman’s homeowner’s
insurance company quickly
declared the damage to be fire-related,
since last summer’s Station Fire
was the direct cause of the slide.
He tore out kitchen cabinets,
appliances and sinks. He broke up
some of the wall plaster to a height
of 2 feet (that will likely have to go
higher, because the mold is already
3 feet up). The floors and subfloors
will come up next.
Before this massive restoration
is finished, it could cost $150,000-
$200,000, he said, and displace his
family from their home for 4-6
months.
Others in the neighborhood
haven’t gotten off to such a brisk
start. Just down the street, Pam Land
welcomed a visitor to her “living
room” — a couple of upholstered
chairs positioned on the back patio,
next to a pile of sodden carpet and
padding. She was waiting for a visit
from an insurance adjuster while
two workmen shoveled out her atrium.
The mud in there had piled up to
3 feet, pressing against her French
doors, but, mercifully, not breaking
them. Still, her family room, kitchen
and part of her master bedroom had
been flooded to a depth of several
inches.
The insurance man should be
able to assess the extent of the damage.
“I’m just taking it one step at a
time,” Land said. “The main thing is
getting the mud out of the house.”
Well, that might be only half the
battle, according to contractors. At
many homes, the mud also flowed
beneath them, which can create an
unseen but no less dire threat.
Bill Smith of WLS Construction
walked through the Dearman home
and pointed to a hump-backed bulge
in the kitchen floor. Mud underneath
was pushing upward. He then indicated
the base of a wall whose plaster
had been partially torn off. “I just
hope their (foundation) footings
aren’t up and down too much,” he
said. “You look at this stuff and it
starts looking curved. Look along
this edge. See how it goes up and
down? The ground’s been heaving.
Hopefully there are not any broken
footings.”
They’ll know when they rip up
the floors and start painstakingly
shoveling dirt out of the crawl space
beneath the house.
This should be a concern even
for homeowners who kept the mud
out of their living spaces. Residents
in the slide area were thrilled with
the summer-like heat wave of early
this week, because of its effect on
drying out walls and floors.
But Moufarrege said that there’s
another edge to that sword. “The
mud in the crawl space is in darkness,”
he said. “When you get 80-
degree temperatures outside, the
water evaporates. It gets into the
subfloor, into the carpet pad. It will
buckle a hardwood floor.”
And then the threat of mold arises
anew. Extracting mud from the
crawl space would be akin to a mining
operation, so the more expedient
method is pulling up floors and digging
it out.
Whatever the work entails,
homeowners seem anxious to get on
with it — while also keeping a nervous
eye on upcoming forecasts, of
course: Light rain is expected
Friday and Saturday, with another
storm rolling in early next week.
“Everybody’s life has been disrupted,” Dearman said. “You want
to get this thing cleaned up, get the
rebuilding going and get back in the
house as soon as you can to try to
get your life back to normal.”
----
An angel riding in on a skip
loader.
That’s how some residents at the
top of Ocean View are describing a
contractor who ventured into the
area in the days after the Feb. 6
mudslide and offered his equipment,
materials and the services of
his crew ... free.
His name was Giulliano Prieto
of Prieto Engineering in Los
Angeles. Resident Pam Land said
that he approached from out of
nowhere on Feb. 8 and said, “Do
you need help?” Then Prieto used
his skip loader to clear mud from
her house and provided plywood
and worked with his crew to board
up broken windows at the front of
her house, since another storm was
due in the next day.
“I felt these people were hurting,” Prieto said later. “They don’t
know who’s going to foot the bill.
Why not just help them and relieve
this huge stress off their shoulders?”
Prieto first came to the area on
the day after the storm as part of the
Mormon Helping Hands Program of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday
Saints. He worked at a church
member’s home on Arroyo Summit
Drive, but when he learned of the
devastation on Ocean View, he headed
there next. He immediately found
a man standing bewildered on a
property inundated with mud.
“He didn’t know what to do,” Prieto said. “It’s so inexpensive for
me to put a little diesel in my
machine and have my guys volunteer
to help out. I’ve been blessed to
have work to carry me through this
recession, so why not give back?”
---
The chance of rain is 30% for
Friday night, 40% for Saturday, with
temperatures taking a big drop,
according to the National Weather
Service. But Stuart Seto, a weather
specialist with the Oxnard office,
said Wednesday of the rain forecast,
“We’re looking at it to be very light
— a half-inch to an inch, and the
model is showing that to weaken.”
Another storm is behind it, however,
due to arrive Sunday night and
linger through Tuesday, Seto said.
---
The Los Angeles County
Department of Public Works says
that its forecasters believe the heaviest
rain will fall on Monday, and
Public Works has been going to
great lengths to scoop out local
debris basins, according to
spokesman Bob Spencer.
The Mullaly Debris Basin at the
top of Ocean View, which overflowed
on Feb. 6 after a massive
boulder blocked a water inlet, was
filled to capacity with mud and
debris at the conclusion of that
storm. Efforts to clear it have been
conducted around the clock ever
since, with an estimated 1,300 truckloads
of material hauled out of the
basin in the past week and a half.
Spencer said Mullaly will be completely
empty by the weekend.
Down the hill, about one-fourth
of the debris has been removed from
the Pickens basin.
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