The 1978 Flood Left Wide-ranging Effects

The storms in February 1978 that caused so much destruction in Pinecrest also hammered communities all over Southern California. As the storm came in from the Pacific Ocean it blew winds of 80 to 90 miles per hour and pushed 10-foot waves over the breakwall in LA and Long Beach harbors. Both harbors were closed and small-boat marinas were ripped apart, tearing hundreds of boats from their moorings and sinking many. Tornadoes ripped through Huntington Beach and El Segundo, tearing off roofs, destroying scores of mobile homes (of course) in a trailer park, and wrecking small planes at an airport.

People were washed into the roaring flood control channels and rivers, some killed as bridges collapsed beneath their cars. A dramatic scene played out in Acton where a wild cat compound was hit by floodwaters. Three big lions were freed and the panicked cats were shot by deputies with rifles – one as it charged the deputies. Flood damage was widespread across the region.

Closer to the Crescenta Valley, La Cañada experienced some mudflows into houses. The embankment on Foothill Boulevard just west of the Crescenta-Cañada YMCA collapsed, threatening a house above.

On Markridge Road, just west of the heavily damaged Pinecrest community, many houses were inundated with mud from a surprising source. County Flood Control had for 20 years been dumping mud and rocks excavated from local debris basins in a big pile above Markridge, just below what is today Deukmejian Park. The pile collapsed in the rain and flowed down into the houses across the street. Three hundred volunteers from the valley lined Markridge Road, filling sandbags and shoveling mud from houses. Ironically a lot of the mud had been piled on the landfill above Markridge in the previous three weeks as Flood Control workers scrambled to quickly empty filling debris basins in the Crescenta Valley.

Over on the Tujunga side, all hell broke loose. A debris basin dam in Zachau Canyon burst under tremendous pressure and a 30-foot wall of water and mud roared into the streets below. Debris from that wave of destruction was seen hanging from telephone lines. Cars were tossed around like toys, one ending up propped upright on its rear bumper against a telephone pole, another car ending up stacked on top of another, which was upside down.

A little to the west, the quiet but criminally neglected Verdugo Hills Cemetery shifted, then slid down the hill, carrying a load of decayed bodies with it. In this now infamous mudslide, bodies and parts of bodies were strewn through the neighborhoods below. Coffins protruded from the exposed hillside. I covered this horrifying incident in previous columns, so I won’t go into detail; suffice it to say it was incredibly gruesome.

In a twist of irony, rescue crews arriving on the scene said there were dead bodies everywhere, yet there were no actual victims. The bodies and parts of bodies were quickly gathered up, and attempts were made to ID the bodies. The cemetery was hurriedly stabilized with plastic sheeting.

Down on Foothill Boulevard, a firetruck rolling to a rescue was hit by a flashflood rushing across the road. The firemen abandoned the truck and used the truck’s firehoses to pull themselves to safety. Big Tujunga Canyon was raging, the roiling water stretching from one side of the canyon to the other. A big stretch of the canyon road was completely washed away.

Communities of the canyon, like Riverwood Ranch and residents higher up, were cut off from rescue. Higher up the canyon at Mill Creek an entire small community was washed away resulting in several deaths. I’ll cover the Mill Creek tragedy next week.

Quite a contrast to write about watery disaster when it’s so beautiful outside. I did want to make one correction to my tale of the Pinecrest mudslide. I had put the blame on the Pinecrest developer for the failed Shields Canyon debris basin at the top of Pine Cone Road. The developer’s family reminded me that the too-small debris basin was actually put in, and inadequately maintained, by the Forest Service.