At the Nicolas Cage sinkhole in Malibu, El Niño fears alter the good vibes mood

As the waves bashed the coast this week, boulders smashed into the piles of Mitchell Leib’s Malibu home, plucking them like a “guitar string” and shaking his house.

That, along with news of a massive sinkhole opening up about seven miles away, has the man worried about the house he’s lived in for 10 years.

Standing outside a shopping center in Malibu on Thursday afternoon, Leib, 67, checked a tide chart to see when the water would be low enough for him to even be able to see the damage to his house.

After days of high tides and the remnants of Hurricane Marie battering his home, Leib said his wife has asked if they can sell the house and move elsewhere.

He’s not entirely opposed.

“We’re looking to have peace and quiet in our lives,” Leib said. “Not fear.”

Fear is exactly what was struck in some Malibu residents since early Tuesday, when the sinkhole opened up in front of a beachside property owned by actor Nicolas Cage. By the day’s end, the hole was about 25 feet deep and 30 by 60 feet wide.

Most residents on the street have been ordered to evacuate, with seven homes red-tagged due to hazardous conditions and an additional 24 red-tagged because emergency vehicles wouldn’t be able to access them in an emergency, city officials have said.

Not everybody appears to be quite as worried as Leib, or at least not everybody is showing it.

Former Malibu Mayor Andy Stern’s house was one of those ordered to evacuate because emergency vehicles can’t access it. Stern, who is a real estate agent, said he thinks the sinkhole down the street was a one-off incident caused by a combination of a burst water pipe and the waves, and not something that is necessarily a harbinger of unsolvable problems to come.

The city of Malibu said the sinkhole was “caused by coastal erosion from high waves and tides associated with Hurricane Marie,” adding that the city is “preparing for potential strong storms, high surf, heavy rain, mudslides and coastal erosion this winter associated with forecast El Niño conditions.”

The Malibu residents who live near the beach but up on higher ground are concerned for their neighbors and for the coastline as a whole.

Jo Giese was in her home on the phone with her insurance company for an unrelated reason Thursday when she thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask whether her policy covered a sinkhole swallowing her home.

Not that Giese thought there was much of a chance — she and her husband live in a house on a cliff above the ocean. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder, given those ordered to evacuate included two of her friends.

Giese said she has been monitoring the work contractors have been doing. She saw a long line of concrete trucks headed that way a few days ago, and a contractor told her the concrete was to fill in the hole. When she went to see the hole for herself, it appeared unchanged, and a contractor told her that the concrete had been washed out to sea.

Malibu City Manager Joseph Irvin previously said construction and repairs would take about four weeks.

Leib hasn’t decided yet what all of this means for the future.

“Is this just a one-time event, or what we would call ‘normal?’” he said. “Or is this really a reflection of a greater problem?”