Malibu-area residents confused, frustrated after Woolsey fire closures lifted yet they were turned away

As mandatory evacuation orders from the Woolsey fire were lifted Thursday, Nov. 15, in the Calabasas and Malibu area, thousands of residents poured down the 101 Freeway and Pacific Coast Highway to return home.

But road closures and being turned away from their neighborhoods led to confusion.

At Mullholland Highway and Stunt Road, several residents waited to be let back in to their neighborhood.

Navid Mat sat in his red Mini Cooper as he called the supervisor for the California Highway Patrol officer at the road block.

Mat said he and his family had been stuck in their neighborhood for three days when police shut down Mulholland Highway from Calabasas south to Malibu.

On Thursday, he finally left to buy more food when police reopened the corridor. But when he returned three hours later, the closure to his neighborhood was in place.

“I’ve got milk. I’ve got groceries,” he said. “My wife and kids are there.”

Some areas of Malibu and Calabasas were reopened earlier in the week. An evacuation order for all of Calabasas was lifted Wednesday, Nov. 14.

On Thursday, officials announced neighborhoods in Malibu from the ocean, north to city limits were reopened.

Still, some exceptions remained.

Peppderdine University, Puerco Canyon Road, the Corral Canyon Park, the Malibu Beach RV Park, and Malibu Canyon Road, north of Civic Center Way remained closed.

Officials warned residents returning to the Malibu area about burned out power poles, burned and damaged homes, debris filling roadways, broken gas lines, and burned guard rails.

The Monte Nido, Piuma Road, and Topanga areas were also closed. The fire was not visible from these communities, which may have led to further confusion among residents.

“Our current eastern-most border of the fire is along Malibu Canyon. Our concern was that if the fire had jumped Malibu Canyon with a westerly wind, it would bring the impact to the communities of Monte Nido, Piuma Road, and Topanga.” said LA County Fire Assistant Chief Anthony Williams in a video announcement at about 6 p.m. Thursdsay. The closure allowed for firefighters to operate throughout those communities while fighting the fire, Williams said.

At Stunt Road on Thursday, about a dozen people on foot and in their cars also attempted to get back in, but were rebuffed.

One man in a silver sedan yelled at the CHP officer demanding to be let into the neighborhood.

“Do you want to go to jail?” the officer said back. The man drove off.

CHP officials declined to comment on the road closures, saying they were only assisting fire officials with traffic control.

LA County Fire Supervising Dispatcher Cheryl Sims acknowledged the confusing situation.

“They’re trying to be as informative as they can, but also be sensitive to the residents who have lost their homes,” Sims said.

MORE: This map shows where the Woolsey fire is burning in LA and Ventura counties

Less than a half mile to the west on Cold Canyon Road, residents there were also being denied entry.

At a billboard displaying several maps showing different information of the Woolsey fire, CalFire spokesman Kevin Colburn measured with his fingers the distance from the fire line to this neighborhood.

“So, that’s about two miles,” he said, pointing to where a red line at the eastern edge of the Woolsey burn area marked an uncontained fire line.

Waving his hand over the hilly, unincorporated neighborhoods between Los Virgenes Road and Topanga Canyon, he said “if the fire caught the wrong way, all of this could go.”

Colburn said he understood residents being anxious to return home, but he stressed that the fire remained unpredictable.

“We’re seeing fire behavior over the last year or so that we’ve never seen before,” he said. “The times have changed.”

Besides working for CalFire, he experienced the effects of wildfire first hand earlier this year — a Redding resident, his home was nearly evacuated in the devastating Carr fire.

Living on the east side of the 5 Freeway from the fire, his family didn’t end up having to flee. But he was close enough that evacuating was a real possibility.

“You could hear the propane tanks exploding,” in homes on the west side of Redding, he said.

Colburn said fire officials were still concerned that a change in wind patterns Thursday night could reignite fires in the Malibu and Calabasas area where the road blocks were in place. Still, it wasn’t clear Thursday why these neighborhoods were closed again after residents were allowed to return earlier.

Power was still out in some areas, and utility trucks could be seen with workers trying to get the electricity back.

Aleta Pearce, a nine-year resident of the area, chatted with CHP officers at the intersection with Mulholland before going back to her neighbor’s SUV to wait.

Pearce left the area on Friday when her neighbor knocked on her door to tell her the power was out — when she fired up a generator to get access to the internet, she saw the news about the fires.

She and her father who lives next door took their time gathering their things. Once they saw smoke in the area, they fled.

Even with their lives disrupted, she said she was more frustrated seeing other Malibu area residents getting angry with firefighters. She said she watched the footage of a community meeting in Santa Monica this week where some residents vented their anger at officials.

“They were acting like children,” she said.

She said residents angry with the interruption should remember their homes could also have burned.

Pearce said she’d experienced disaster before — she lost her Mission Hills home in the Northridge earthquake. She and her family were forced to camp in their backyard.

“We live here, we signed up for this,” she said of living in California amid earthquakes, mudslides and fires. “We have to be ready and not be surprised.”