Crews Are on Standby as Storm Soaks Malibu Area : Weather: Beach-goers report chemical odors from drain. The city won’t sandbag homes as it did last year because of a lack of federal funding.

Winter rains soaked charred canyons, surfers braved polluted water and some Malibu residents were slow to prepare for mudslides this week, as the year’s first big storm rolled through the area.

Los Angeles County firefighters had emergency crews on standby and several beach-goers reported chemical odors Wednesday morning from a Santa Monica storm drain as the rains flushed a summer’s accumulation of motor oil, grass clippings, animal droppings and other trash into Santa Monica Bay.

In Malibu, city officials are worried that some residents of areas charred by the 1993 fires are waiting for the city to sandbag their homes to fend off mudslides. Last year, the city used federal disaster assistance to hire crews to sandbag 300 threatened homes, but this year there is no such funding.

“We’re afraid we gave them such good service last year that they’re going to be waiting for us to help them this year,” said Rick Morgan, deputy city engineer for public works. “The Feds have already told us that the money is not going to be available.”

Unprepared residents got a break early in the week as threatened flash floods failed to materialize. Forecasters had warned that rainfall might exceed half an inch an hour, prompting the city to warn 100 residents of flood-prone areas that they may have to evacuate.

“That’s the kind of intensity that can cause the mud to start breaking loose and flowing,” Morgan said.

Throughout Tuesday Santa Monica recorded more than an inch of rainfall. The rains resumed Wednesday and were expected to continue today. Forecasters predicted the weather would clear over the weekend, however, giving residents another chance to prepare for winter storms.

County engineers last year instructed residents of threatened homes in Las Flores Canyon, Big Rock and other burn areas in how to sandbag their homes without funneling torrents of water and mud toward their neighbors’ property.

Residents with those plans or anyone else can pick up sandbags at fire stations, said city spokeswoman Sarah Maurice. But some homes, including Pacific Coast Highway homes damaged by mudslides last year, were still unprotected when the rains began to fall this week.

“I was a little disappointed that they hadn’t placed sandbags in the hardest-hit areas,” Maurice said.

The city has essentially finished its mudslide preparations, Maurice said. Public works employees have installed rails on cliffs to catch debris before it clogs storm drains, and they’ve put concrete barricades on roadways to hold back mud.

County firefighters had swift-water rescue and urban search-and-rescue teams on standby Wednesday, and Pepperdine University opened its evacuation center to assist any residents driven from their homes by mudslides or flash flooding.

“We’re about as prepared as we can be,” Morgan said.

County officials were also concerned about the pollution the rains--and storm water runoff--would bring to Santa Monica Bay.

“Over the years they’ve made the ocean the receptacle of all the storm drains in L.A.,” said Ken Johnson, chief of community services for the County Department of Beaches and Harbors. “We caution people not to swim anywhere near a storm drain for three days” after a storm.

The biggest drains on the Westside are at Ballona Creek and the end of Pico Boulevard. At the end of Pico, a pipeline that normally diverts runoff to the Hyperion sewage treatment plant was overwhelmed by this week’s rains.

On Wednesday morning, several beach-goers reported a chemical odor coming from the Pico drain. The area around any drain can be dangerous for swimmers and surfers because it’s never clear where the water is coming from, said Capt. Bob Buchanan of the L.A. County lifeguards.

“You don’t want to take a chance because you don’t know what area it’s draining,” he said. “It’s a cobweb network.”

County health workers test the bay daily for dangerous levels of bacteria. Pollution from the rains had not forced the county to close beaches as of Wednesday morning, but workers will continue to monitor the water, Buchanan said.

Lifeguards reported that the rains were keeping most people away from the beaches, but big waves will always attract some surfers, Buchanan said. And Morgan, the Malibu engineer, said a few mudslides won’t chase away the canyon residents for long.

“Malibu has always been this way,” he said. “Some people like living on the edge of nature, where nature strikes out occasionally.”