The citizens of this seaside Shangri-la would like us to believe the rich are just like you and me. And that when a big El Nino system is brewing off the coast, Malibuans prepare themselves like the rest of us Home Depot hoi polloi.
Think again.
There is something very Malibu-ish about the way people here are getting ready for the Big Wet. The city paid $10,000, for example, for a fancy contraption called “Sand Bagger.” It sits in the parking lot behind City Hall next to a small mountain of brown sand. Residents can bag up to their hearts’ content, filling each sack in “about two seconds,” says city spokeswoman Nancy Steiner, “without even getting your fingernails dirty.”
And in a city whose motto is “27 Miles of Scenic Beauty,” and the average household income of $149,795 is more than three times the national average, is it any wonder that one of the primary “sand-bag staging areas” will be the Rambla Pacifico tennis courts?
Or that the sand-bag volunteer corps consists of students from nearby West-Coast-blue-blood Pepperdine College?
You can’t blame Malibu for giving it its best shot. After all, it’s not just a playground for the rich and famous. It’s also a place where condos slide down muddy hills, storms chew up wooden piers, and ocean winds suck grass fires into town right up over the Hibachi of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Says Steiner: “We have floods, we have firestorms, we have landslides, we have heavy surf.
“Malibu is vulnerable to every kind of disaster and calamity possible. Weatherwise, we’re prone to getting the short end of the stick.”
But while the rest of us simply patch up the roof and start praying, many Malibu residents are taking far more decisive action.
“A lot of our customers are moving away for the winter and renting out their places,” says Chris Winton over at the Malibu Feed Bin, a popular spot on Pacific Coast Highway and Topanga Canyon Boulevard where stars like Sam Elliott come to pick up things like cat food. “For a lot of them, these are just one of several million-dollar homes so it’s no big deal.”
If storms materialize in Southern California, Malibu’s 12,500 residents will take their medicine in their own inimitable way.
First off, in a town where the local paper lists a “Malibu Road villa. 3story, 4bd, 5.5ba” for a monthly rent of just $19,500, storm damage can get outrageously expensive. Just building here can get outrageously expensive.
“On some hillside parcels, home builders have spent $200,000 just getting the land shored up before they’ve spent a single penny on the house,” says Hap Holmwood, emergency services coordinator for the hockey stick-shaped seaside town northwest of Los Angeles. “We know El Nino’s coming. We just have to be ready. So we’re suggesting homeowners hire their structural engineers now, before it’s too late.”
Still, townies continue to insist that Malibu is not what you think and that they’ll prepare for El Nino just like any other small coastal town.
“People think of Malibu as a wealthy city, but it’s just a small town with a few extremely wealthy people,” says Steiner, who then proceeds to drop the names of a few present and past residents–Whoopi Goldberg, Cher, Larry Hagman, Johnny Carson, Mel Gibson.
“Most of these people,” she admits, “have enough money to hire someone to board up their windows for them.”
There may be some exceptions. And perhaps there’s some truth to Steiner’s argument that “in Malibu, a neighbor is a neighbor, regardless of their celebrity status. There are no prima donnas here when disaster strikes.”
Bobette Halverson, a longtime Realtor and resident who first came here to surf in the 1950s, would attest to that.
“We have a wonderful sense of pioneer spirit in Malibu,” says Halverson. “And this is the best place in the world to live, even though we have our little bouts with Mother Nature from time to time. No matter what happens, the next day is always sunny.”
