Family watches in horror as mudslide swallows backyard

MONROVIA, CA (KTRK) -- "Oh, dear God."

Imagine how you would react if you watched a deluge of mud and water flowing from every visible inch of your hillside property.

It's the kind of makeover that a California family's backyard got Tuesday, and it was all captured on video.

A mudflow from storms that hit Monrovia flooded the backyard as the homeowners watched in horror.

"This is terrible!," Mallory Socha exclaims behind the camera. "Oh crap!"

Thinking fast, though, dad Wayne Socha grabbed a sledgehammer and busted out part of a concrete wall to create an escape route for just some of the filthy floodwater.

"I've lived here for 30 years and I've never seen anything like this happen before," says homeowner Wayne Socha. "Complete shock because you're never prepared for something like that. It wasn't an expected flood."

Wayne says in the past, mudflows have been successfully diverted from his property and the neighbors', spilling down a side alley and onto Highland Avenue.

But this time, he wasn't so lucky.

Reinforcement arrived quickly enough in the form of Monrovia public works crews, armed with sandbags.

They helped the Sochas pile the bags along the back of their home.

Some might say miraculously, not a drop of mud penetrated the house.

"It worked. The house is dry," Wayne Socha says. "Nothing got in."

Flash-flood warnings were in effect across southern California, including in foothill communities near recent burn areas cleared of vegetation that would typically prevent mudflows like the one in Monrovia.